Short but effective rush session. +$15 in 400 hands.
Short but bad Stud session. Card dead, and the few good starting hands I had lost. One of those days the fish are hitting straights and other low odds hands all the time. Stud can be pretty sick. -$5 there.
BR $91.
Will reach $100 before the weekend barring any type of disaster.
I really feel like I'm crushing the fish on NL5 .. I finally might be on to something.
Ended the day breakeven, but I think that was an accomplishment in itself.
The significant development is that I didn't tilt or decrease my play quality. I was up to 3 buyins down (-$15) but kept my head in there. I closed rush for 40 minutes, saw a video, kept my positive mindset and crushed the tables again to make everything I lost back. Before, I think a great weakness I've had is tilting/going into a bad mindset on the first streak of badbeats. Now I have this sort of checklist I think in my head when I go back to the game after bad beats I tell myself "let's get good cards, let's play them even better and let's make some money".
So closing br for the day $91. Tomorrow I get $20-30 rakeback I think, so I'll crash through the $100 br level and complete my challenge. Regardless of br, bonus or anything, I'm truly beating the level. I must have played 10-15K hands I suppose already (my pokertracker trial ended so I have no stats right now).
Overall it was a pretty nasty session, lost a bunch of full stacks. So my comeback was definitely worth double. All types of trash bad beats or hands not hitting like flush draw on flop allin on flop didn't hit. AKs with flush draw on flop K on turn, guy had trips I didn't hit my flush there either to bust his trips. KJs in multiway pot, hit a flush, lost to Axs with better flush, I had the feeling but the chance that villain had the nut flush is too small to not go allin. Lost some weird flips like idiot stealing from sb with 73o with midstack, I had a read on him so I gladly went allin with A10o, he hits a 7 I don't hit anything. Another megafish, limps from co I isolate from bu with A9 the guy calls my bet on an Axx flop, then calls another bet on a 10 turn, then I check behind on a 10 river .. I actually thought right that he could have hit his 10's. He had J10o!!! Lol, just kinda really sucks when fish get rewarded for such catastrophically horrible play, it's so laughable .. I guess one just laughs a little and moves on. 
Smallish, like $2 profit on Stud. Seems like the tables always empty at the time I play, so I was on like 6 tables but within 15 minutes most were shorthanded. So I ended the sesssion there.
BR $106. Challenge complete. When I get home tonight I'll be sitting on a $130 br I estimate when rb gets accredited later today. So I've rocketed from $7 to $130 in less then 2 weeks.
Without a doubt, I'm just crushing this level completely. Played like 300 hands for like +$15. Was just owning the tables. Don't think I played a single hand wrong, only a trips in 3 handed pot, where I should have been more aggresive on flop and/or turn because the board was so draw heavy and I had to end up just calling the river in position when like 4 or 5 draws completed on the river ... luckily my hand held up vs. overpair and two pair. I won with every cbet, every hand I check called down, against every bluff, etc. Was just pretty sick. I was like in some type of zone, analyzing precisely and correctly each situation.
I'm just really happy with my play level right now. I think I'm really playing solid poker now. I guess I should have done this a long time ago, but I needed to wear myself out of playing breakeven poker before finally really beginning to study. I'm sure most of the change is due to all the videos I'm watching. Just some really helpful videos out there. Yesterday I watched TwiceT crushing NL10 sh and Hasenbraten crushing NL50 ..
I feel like a sponge soaking up all the info. I as well don't think it's been entirely bad I've played so much poker before finally concentrating on learning. I think the vast experience in different levels and game types certainly is helping me understand and relate to pretty quickly to the situations I see on the videos.
I am however aware of leaks. I guess some may be inherent to rush poker, but that also can be fixed by having better focus on the tables and or sitting out of the other tables when I have an interesting hand (I'm playing 4 rush tables at a time always). The biggest leak has been calling down when opponents have gotten superaggresive, ie river shoves. A river shove on rush is very rarely a bluff it seems. It's more like they have the nuts, weren't skillful enough to get the pot to shovable size on the river and kind of say "ok, let's get full value or no value here".
So I've lost $20 to $25 in this fashion. Some were sort of misclicks, ie one where with A6s I had trips, a flush draw reached on the turn but I had a very interesting hand on another table so I instacalled a villains donk on the river .. I then saw he had bet $5.50 in a $0.55 pot .. I guess I had kind of thought ok he's donking pot here and saw 5.5 in his bet and thought it was .55 and my 6s are good against a lot of hands, I'll call .. obviously would have never called $5.50 when any full house or flush that reached on the river beat me. And also had the typical overpair vs. trips several times where I should have folded. Once villain had bet/called my 3 bet utg, board was Q10x I had KK, called his $3.50 river shove, when it was pretty obvious the only hands he could have bet/call 3 bet/go broke with here were AA QQ 1010 (he had 1010). Also KK on 789 board where short stack straight shoves river, again same situation, villain bets utg calls my 3 bet. The only hand he could have been so aggressive postflop with were 88 and 99. I guess it wasn't wrong either to call him since he was pot committed, but really I was only beating QQ (turn was a 10 so 1010 also had the nuts and JJ had a straight..), but I was 100% sure he had spiked a set there or even. I guess the positive of all these situations is that in every single one I read villains hand correctly .. I guess I just have to learn how to get off the rush speed train in these situations and take more time to decide on a good fold instead of the typical "ok, let's just call here and move on to the next hand" mode one often gets into on rush.
So, having said all that in the previous post, it's time to go on to my next challenge :
$100 to $1.000 challenge. 
♠_cool:
I'll divide the challenge into 3 distinct parts though, kind of obvious, first goal $200 (NL10), second goal $500 (NL25), third goal $1.000 (NL50)!!!
As can be seen I'll definitely be using a more aggresive br management. I think I'm just beating rush so good at the moment that until I see signals indicating otherwise I can be aggresive. I actually played like 500 hands in NL50 rush before beginning this challenge, when I started tilting on MTTs. I was actually up like $120 there, so I think aggresive br management is definitely a good option in fish infested rush.
May the poker gods finally bless me. I think I've come a long way, worked pretty hard, I definitely deserve finally treating myself with a big upswing.
Well. Got tempted into playing a couple MTTs today. BLT and FTOPS 11. Again, as usual a pretty sick experience. BLT QQ vs. fish hitting set with 33, out like 15.000, didn't really care about that bustout. But the Ftops bustout hurt so bad. Out 3637/26000, 3200 paid, but I had at 30bb+ stack till like 10 minutes before I busted out. Then things just fell apart. Had two failed steals, got 3 bet with AKs, where I didn't hit the board and folded .. then still in pretty deep with 20bb, came the calamity, got KK .. of course a big stack had AA. Geez. Unreal. If there was a ranking of unlucky tournament players I'm probably around the top. Didn't even miniumum cash for 4 hours of effort!! Fuck that!!!
Having said all that, I'm not playing any more MTTs for a long while. Till/if I get $1.000 br at least. Don't want to leak a cent more playing MTTs where I persistently have bad luck. ♠_mad:
BR : $108. (Wasted $14 between the two tourneys)
Probably not playing anything else today.
Originally posted by alenstrat
Well. Got tempted into playing a couple MTTs today. BLT and FTOPS 11. Again, as usual a pretty sick experience. BLT QQ vs. fish hitting set with 33, out like 15.000, didn't really care about that bustout. But the Ftops bustout hurt so bad. Out 3637/26000, 3200 paid, but I had at 30bb+ stack till like 10 minutes before I busted out. Then things just fell apart. Had two failed steals, got 3 bet with AKs, where I didn't hit the board and folded .. then still in pretty deep with 20bb, came the calamity, got KK .. of course a big stack had AA. Geez. Unreal. If there was a ranking of unlucky tournament players I'm probably around the top. Didn't even miniumum cash for 4 hours of effort!! Fuck that!!!Having said all that, I'm not playing any more MTTs for a long while. Till/if I get $1.000 br at least. Don't want to leak a cent more playing MTTs where I persistently have bad luck. ♠_mad:
BR : $108. (Wasted $14 between the two tourneys)
Probably not playing anything else today.
putting $14 of a $122 bankroll into two MTTs is a pretty big leak IMO 
OK, so I had a pretty damn good day on Rush. Two sessions where shanshichi (don't know if that's his pokerstrategy name) sweated me .. or rather watched me rip apart an NL10 rush field. Up like $40 in like 1K hands. Br now $121. And this profit was despite losing a couple flips and getting sucked out of $25 of profits (AA vs. AK pfai, turn is K, river is K - JJ trips vs. fish that limp called A9o utg, AJx board, fish hits a runner runner A high flush (I even had the J of clubs for a lower flush) and also a couple of spots I couldn't get full value like trips on a board where a flush draw hit the river and I called behind river, etc). Hell and I'm doing all this with zero stats.
Of course I didn't even respect my already aggresive br management, and moved up to NL10. Since I sweated shanshichi and he was playing NL10 I thought it was pointless to then play a session on a different buyin level, since we were focusing on NL10 play (great excuse to move up, huh?). So I guess I'm staying in NL10 until indicated otherwise. I just felt I was pretty much crushing the players in this level too.
I actually had two bad days, Friday and Saturday, didn't have time to post. Lost like $20 something in two short sessions. Which I actually liked, because it led to another significant development. I was able to stop playing when running bad/not playing with the right session. Those two days I was pretty tired after work and played you know just for playing because I was bored. There I realized one of the fundamental differences between how I was playing before and how I was playing now. I now know the feeling of that mindset needed to win that sort of "I'm going to crush" this feeling that's hard to explain. When I don't have that mindset for whatever reason (tired, personal problems, etc.) I don't have to play. Period. No reason to play poker if you are not playing to win. Playing just because or because you're bored, or for entertainment is no good if the goal is to make money.
I've been trying to get a cracked version of pokertracker or something but haven't found anything that works. If I can't get anything that works I guess I'll buy it if I reach something like $250 br. Kinda tired of playing blind without stats.
Short session, around 130 hands. +$9 (NL10 rush)
BR : $130
Don't think I'll be able to play any poker tonight getting home late from work.
I forgot to add, I played a freeroll yesterday on Party and some SNGs. Nailed a $15 ticket on the freeroll 1/920 players. It's a 50 seat frenzy ticket .. so on Saturday I'll play to see if I get a ticket to the Sunday 250K Gtd (that ticket would be worth $215 .. I hope I can turn that one to cash if I get it .. no point in playing a $215 tourney). On SNG played 5 sets of 6 SNGs for like $3 profit. Haven't been really playing much SNG, I think at best I'll make 1/2 the bonus on offer. I rather focus on rush where I'm doing so well. I just hate grinding so many SNG's at Partypokers profit with that sick rake .. so not really very motivated to clear the full Party bonus. Just shooting for the first half $50, and the first $20 bonus on the Snowball + the freeroll entries from the snowball. And after that I can calmly grind a set of SNGs a day perhaps till I reach the silver $100 bonus.
OK, I lied. I ended up playing another short 100 hand session. I actually lost a couple of big pots but stacked like full stack fish almost hilariously ie guy limped J8s, and went broke for his full stack on 8754A board (I had 65o from bb) !!! 
Even shoves the river for his remaining $5 w that ace, wtf, impossible to understand. 
But all the better for me! ♠_biggrin:
BR $137.
Geez. Can't be so easy to make money can it?
Sorry my loyal blog readers, but I have lied yet again. Played another short 100 hand session
BR $146.
♠_cool:
Wow, I really need to get stats. Really wanna see my rush graphs! Pretty sick heater I'm on.
OK, going to work now.
I need to fix a leak with my bet sizings I think. I'm not getting full value in many situations. I'm getting a little greedy and want full value in the river when a shove won't get paid. Ie I had a set with 77 on K76 flop, guy bet three streets and I shoved the river, but since he had cold called the flop he was on KQ at best and he would have only called a min river reraise, and if he had 66 he was shoving my reraise anyway, so a shove was stupid and lost out on $3 or so extra value (was a huge pot deep vs. deep stack). I've done a lot of similar moves which I think are amounting to a considerable leak. If I had gotten an extra $2 in average from let's say 10 situations like that instead of getting greedy I'd have $20 more in profits .. so I need to play these situations smarter when I know the guy is probably too weak to call a shove but won't give his hand up to a min reraise.
Break even. But it was a good session anyway. Played around 500 hands. Exactly breakeven. BR $146. But I was down like $20 at the start. Pretty sick aggression kept getting 3 bet and cbet out pots. Then I got more aggresive, and that worked good. Stacked a steal with A10 on 10xx flop, which took some courage, because I was going broke with such a marginal hand in NL5, guy just kept betting every street and got it in with his full stack on the river, he had 99. I guess it will take some getting used to but I'll have to stick to hands that "seem" to be ahead and not make nitty folds here in NL10. So, this was like the turning point of the session. I stopped making nitty folds and started stacking fish.
I now see I probably made a couple very nitty folds to button squeezers, JJ and QQ. I think I'll have to consider going broke preflop lightly against button squeezes and resteals in NL10. The aggresion level is wayyyyy greater then NL5 rush. NL5 rush is just a swimming pool of passive fish that limp call all the time. NL10 on the other hand is full of regs or fish that seem to love to 3 bet you.
So I guess the first order of business is to come up with a game plan against squeezes. Not having one has been a leak, and now I'm totally sure I've been folding many times I've had the best hand. I wouldn't be afraid to say that I'm probably ahead 70 or 80% of the time against those squeezes. I guess I'll have to decide between call 3 bet OOP and donk flop if my JJ QQ KK is still overpair (willing to go broke vs. reraise) and 4 bet and be willing to go broke with JJ+ preflop vs. squeezes. I'm wondering if directly shoving them wouldn't be a good option, I'd have to see how many times it works or I stack the squeezer against how many times I get called by KK+ and lose with JJ QQ and AK. So I think this is my main priority. I need to plug this leak and aggression can only be answered by aggresion I think?
Short session, around 800 hands. Pretty swingy, probably because of all the aggresion in this level. Started down more then $10 and then got back. The weird thing is that the aggresion comes in like small periods. Seems like for 15 minutes every time you raise you get reraised someone cold calls behind you and lots of trash like that + not hitting and you're really in tough spot after tough spot having to fold a lot of times after having committed $1-$3 to the pot. But that's normal, an actually another positive I think, since I'm keeping my head in there every time and making my way through the bad/complicated part of the session and making a profit again. That is certainly a MAJOR change over how I was playing before. Before I was always losing it or entering a negative mindset as soon as I started getting pushed around/not hitting anything.
BR $150.
I forgot, yesterday I played some stud, like $1 profit in 20 minutes played.
I'm making a study of steal spots, by hand since I have no stats. Just taking down how many steals are succesful, get cold called and get 3 bet, to judge how profitable they are vs. this increased aggresion. I think in NL5 rush I had like 5bb/100 profit at least JUST from stealing. I actually think this study will be more precise then the software could make. I don't think the software can differentiate steals from iso raise/value raise.
I'm also studying what board textures to cbet. I know that I have a major leak there. I'm never sure what board texture to cbet and just cbetting "because it's standard" doesn't cut it for me. I like erring for the side of caution when I think I'm ahead, and not inflating the pot unnecesarily. Leave the big pots for when I do have something.
Short, 600 hand session. Off to work now. Pretty much owned the tables yet again, too bad I lost $7 of profit vs. a fish that called my aces with 29s from the bb, the guy reraised me on the flop with air, called my turn bet and hit his runner runner flush on the river. Wow. Was pretty sick. I was like this when I saw what he had : LOL. Seriously funny and amazing how people play.
Br $160
I think I started rush exactly two weeks ago. So I've gone from $7 to $160 pretty fast. I think like 12.000 NL5 hands and around 4.000 NL10 hands so far. I hope I get rakeback this week. I cleared the whole $50 "bonus" already, but it seems that the bonus really isn't a bonus, I got $1 in rakeback for last week, so I think the bonus was substracted from my rakeback. Hope I do get some good rakeback this week.
Wow, seriously, I'm just crushing rush microstakes. I don't like to congratulate myself so much 
but my play level is really quite objectively above the great majority of the players I'm facing right now. What's going on is no coincidence, I finally started doing my homework. I've been studying and reviewing my sessions more then I actually play since I started rush 2 weeks ago. And now this is giving me really good results. I think I've finally made a huge stride in postflop play. And finally really understood the power of position. The power of position factors in postflop mainly, I guess newbies just get this general notion that you should raise from position but you really don't understand why. I'd like to thank TwiceT for his videos which were a great help. Now I'm constantly profitably exploiting players from this level over and over again from position. Stuff that is so simple yet I never saw till now, like the power of just calling behind when sb steals or raising the bb if sb completes. It's almost guaranteed money. And I finally understood steal ranges and why I should be raising, and most importantly what I'd like to steal with. It's just amazing how junk like 78o plays so well postflop in position vs. a fish blinds call range, yet hands like weak Qx are so horrendous to steal with, since they have zero playability, aside from being dominated often by the fish range. I'm just seeing so many exploitable situations now that I think it would take a megapost to write it all down.
Played a good long session just now. Wow. Just demolishing the tables. Start the session yet again, real poorly, 3 buyins down in no time, two suckouts for lost stock (ie 44 vs. AQ on A410 board, allin on flop, villain hits runner runner straight, AA sucked out by flush draw), some poor plays, ie lost a $13 stack on a draw. Limped behind several fish limpers with J8s, flop was KJ4, giving me a pair and flush draw, things went a little crazy on the flop. Small stack donks big I call in position, bb which had check reraises, small stack shoves I call, big blind shoves I call. Just kind of got drawn into the situation which obviously was a great mistake, I had to avoid problems when the small stack shoved, I thought bb would only call and I could get out of my hand not hitting, didn't expect him to overshove when I called. So that was very poorly played. I should have been expecting trips, etc. Too bad I wasn't the one with trips there! When everyone showed the situation was dire, bb had K4 for two pair, and sb had the nut flush draw, so I was drawing dead, only the two J outs could save me, which didn't happen. Really very poorly played hand I'll admit. Was ridiculous to lose a somewhat deep stack with so much action and not even a nut draw.
After this, straightened the ship and demolished the tables. I'm closing the session w the following stacks on my 4 tables : $24.96, $17.04, $17.69, $25.06. I mean without a doubt a demolishment, a shame that the session started so poorly. But this is what I've been doing for 2 weeks already, any long session I play I can pretty much double my stack on every single table. Not just some luck in one table or a big hand on one table. I'm consistently building my stack, good play after good play after good play. I can't even count the number of fish I stacked or the number of big pots I won. Actually I'm tempted to continue playing. Just fish galore out there right now. ♠_cool:
Br right now $168
Update : session stacks now : 34.12/16.80/18.76/23.04 and I timed out with AA on huge pot, had a complicated situation with AQ on AQxx board w tons of aggresion at the same time, I hit the button to get more time and forgot about the table. Lost out on a $25 pot!! Just had a sick feeling in the stomach when I saw that the guy that won had K4s chasing a flush and the other fish had AJs chasing the same flush draw, with just overcards. The K4s guy won with pair of 4's. ♠_cry: Unbelievable. Just makes you wanna cry to time out aces and then see that showdown. At least is someone had trips or something and had me beat wouldn't have felt that bad.
Br $177 (would be $192 if I hadn't timed out AA ♠_o: ♠_mad: ) Wow. I think I might not sleep tonight. Just so many fish out there!
OK, actually going to sleep 3AM. I'm pretty tired. Hell of a session, 2K+ hands. The transformation I've had in just two weeks is unreal. I can't believe what I'm doing. Just really unreal. You know those charts that track poker progression of different poker players that's in one of the articles, mine is the one where things are going slowly for a real long time and suddenly things go vertical. Pretty unreal to actually be crushing poker after being mildly profitable for so long (except when I crushed NL2).
So finally, now I'm officially rolled for NL10 according to my BR management. Although I've been playing NL10 since I had 8 buyins ($80) Just made it to $200 BR, from $7 15 days ago.
What started as a sort of joke on September 2, 15 days ago, turned into something I didn't quite imagine. Mainly since I had played breakeven Rush when I played a couple of months ago. The demolishment that ensued of NL5, and even more so in NL10 left even myself amazed.
But what happened was no coincidence, I finally sat my ass down with a notebook, watched videos, took notes. Sat down with the equilator, calculated how different hands do against a fish limp range, etc. Read articles. Carefully reviewed sessions and took notes. I started spending 1/2 to 2/3 of the time I dedicate to poker to study and review and less then 1/2 to actual play.
Now looking forward for $300, which I think would be a bankroll alltime high. Can't remember what I reached before, I think it was high 200's. And of course, the real goal, $500 br and NL25. Finally move above NL10 where I was stuck for so long before.
Br : $221. Good profit in around 1K hands.
Actually would have been better had I not gone ridiculously allin deep stacked with combo draw AKs w flush draw on low board. I guess I got carried away because I was winning so much and I thought I was invincible!! Guy had set of 2s, I didn' improve. t
Another totally solid session, apart from that hand. Actually I lost almost two identical hands, then the same things happened with AKs vs. AA on low board too, but guy was only midstacked. I guess the key error in both these plays is that I didn't evaluate that my A and K outs weren't live, I only had the draw outs, so I actually had much less equity then I thought.
Finally got some stats, but for less then two weeks. Stupid short HEM trial.
I guess the graph is pretty good. I'm running at around 11 bb/100. Which is certainly very good, but maybe not demolishing. It's just amazing how much I've leaked. Just from the two times I sat down to play "because I was bored" I threw away : from hands 3800-4500 (-$35), 7100-7500 (-$30). -$65 of profit. And just from calling river shoves or going all in for a deep stack with a flush draw I've leaked at least $40 unnecesarily from situations where I should have folded. So I guess the amazing thing is that I could actually be up like $200 instead of $110. 20 bb/100 .. wow that would really be a demolishment. So hopefully I'll play a little smart and not lose any or that many profits in the future from playing when I shouldn't and bad calls of shoves.
very very nice run ! with this winrate your gonna be up the limits , quicker than me IMO
And PLEAASEE make your posts smaller Andd PLEEAsee post more graphs .
Just bookmarked your blog ! 
Gold!!! Finally, dying to see some Gold videos and articles!!
Edit : Just scanned the new stuff available .. I see I'll be doing a lot of reading and not that much video watching. Really interesting stuff in gold, in particular for SNG.
The videos for both cash and sng are way beyond the limit any gold player is playing so I guess I'll keep seeing silver ones mostly .. still have like 1/2 the silver videos left to watch.
