Originally posted by vincenttafolla979
Thanks for the post. It has helped me a lot to learn some new tricks on poker.
errr, thanks pal, I'll be equally pleased and astonished if these ramblings turn out to be of some use to anybody 
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Mid-Month Review/Random Spiel
Originally posted by MasochisticDesire
So 
I need 437 vpp by 22:21 Sat 14th which I think will be between 10&12k hands. GL
And ... I fecking got it!!! @ 22:18 I was 6 VPPs short. I assume that the VPPs update every 5 minutes because at 22:20. literally 1 minute to spare, I hit the target.
Had to add 2 NL25 tables to get there and actually lost the $50 I got for the bonus but I am still just chuffed to have hit the target 
Crazy tilting week too including a disciplinary at work and losing our relegation battle 8-2 
but dragged my arse to the finish line.
I'll write it all up tomorrow, but now - I'm watching the rugby.
Yeah, so that is it really. I don't want to elaborate further on the disciplinary at work other than to say that poker is not the only area in which I would benefit from being more disciplined. Having made a mistake, however, I am at least happy with how I responded. In my professional life in general it is clear that, despite having a respectable job, it is a field that is rewarding but doesn't play to my strengths or make me happy and I do not want to be here a couple of years from now. The direction of my life needs a pretty drastic overhaul if I am to achieve half the things I hope to and become half the man I want to be. However, having been more rash in attempting this 'overhaul' as an (even) younger man, I now appreciate the stability I currently have and am gunna cash that in until the time is right.
Anyway, a very stressful week and I was coming home and putting in the volume to hit the bonus mark in a far from ideal mindset. Despite that, I think may game didn't degenerate past my B/C game and a mate who has recently got back into PLO helped keep me on track. Hit the deadline with 1 minute to spare having already lost more than the bonus was worth 
Winning!!!
NL10z so far –
Disclaimer:
Spoiler
'Ere be wordz'
Cliffs in bold.
I am surprised at some of the trends appearing in my graph. Most notably – the declining red line. I know that this is very common among microstakes players (and beyond) but rightly or wrongly, I have always had a breakeven or profitable red line.
First consideration, despite the volume being minimal, would be to check my stats from winning in January to losing in February. There is no notable difference in my basic stats and tendencies at each street although I have opened up slightly from the BTN. Of course, with such a minimal hand sample, it is most likely that I was just on a bit of a heater early on. I will, however, be keeping an eye out for any anomalies that develop and look forward to learning how to do in-depth database analysis just as soon as the sample is large enough to warrant it.
It is true that my previously profitable red line (that has always given me some source of satisfaction) may well have been costing me value overall and acted as a false comfort blanket – for example, as I would 3b hands IP that I now think are more profitable to cold-call etc. Perhaps some of the natural and most profitable adjustments necessary at NL10z will inevitably hit your red line: for example, folding to a large percentage of river raises/bets is probably correct in an environment where typical opponents value-bet very thin, don’t bluff often enough, and river raises are usually weighted very heavily towards nutted hands - these loses from making ‘correct’ folds (but at higher frequency, nevertheless) will hit your red line rather than your blue line taking a greater hit from calling.
Interestingly, the brief period (5k hands or so) in which I felt I did play my most focused poker (the underlined section) actually saw my red line level out but so too did my blue line! Was I just blocking my blue line with my red and missing value?
I feel that I have not yet found the balance of NL10z and I still think that a b/e red line is very achievable. Beyond this, despite the small sample, the above graph is sufficient to reflect that my standard of play thus far is not going to be sufficient to beat the limit. As I have been so focused on volume rather than study, I have certainly not been playing my A game but in general I feel I am still uncertain of the most profitable adaptations required to beat this limit convincingly.
Evidently, first and foremost at the micros, one should make significant progress by just avoiding common post-flop leaks and focusing on getting value from your strong hands and not spaffing off stacks unnecessarily. Whilst an oversimplification, this common advice is relevant.
I have recently started reading Jandas’s bible on GTO NLH, but, whilst I am finding it very interesting, the most relevant piece of information so far has been ‘…if a player folds too frequently, constantly winning small pots from him while refusing to give action on large pots without the near nuts is likely more profitable than playing optimally.’ We knew this already of course…but are we acting on it? So far I think that I am not realizing a lot of high fold-equity spots and am getting drawn into (or betting myself into) far too many marginal river decisions. No doubt that my ‘big pot’ play needs work too and I think the most useful aid in this will be to do more HH reviews.
There are also trends and population reads that I am also acting upon: I don’t station off as much on the river, I am more wary of strong turn lines, double barrelling without strong holdings is rare, typically villains aren’t V-betting thinly enough on the river, etc. However, all these observations lead to passive exploitation, exploitations that save me money but do not extract value. I need to be considering, not just strengthening my ‘default’ strategy, but also what exploitations are going to have the highest expectation for the limit I am playing.
I think that the majority of all of the problems I have noted above stems from how I have been applying myself to poker since the beginning of this challenge. Volume is of course very important in this game, and, working full-time, I am acutely aware that progress is going to be slow without it. That said, applying 100% of my time to putting in the volume will not yield as high a return at these early stages of my development as studying more. I thought for a long while that I might be able to do both. I by no means want to compromise one for the other but it is clear that the balance has been in favor of putting in volume so far this year.
Short and long of it all is that I need to make vast improvements in my game.
That’ll do for now but a more structured approach to my future study will follow.
GL@thetables.
30k hands (<40 due to late start)
What was I doing you ask? Well, I had to move to a larger room in the same house and tidy the old one, that stole a little time, but... essentially I was degening this game from my childhood
)
It seems very similar to what happened to me when I first started playing zoom in august 2014. Afterwards I recovered and even started beating NL25 (at least so I think) before I quit