The adventures of a poker novice - Fresh start

As i am trying to focus on doing better on one table rather than multi tabling I am starting to put more thought into table selection. At the current NL2 tables I am finding when people don’t have a max buy in they seem to be a bit fishy (as other people have suggested). Also found that some people play a very tournament style if they get down to about 40BB and are just going all in on junk, which is nice to scoop up if I make a premium hand.
I am also quick to move to a new table if someone is making it difficult for me. Previously I would try and get the best of them, but taking on the reading I have done that it is better just to make easier profit elsewhere then try and compete with someone. The only time I haven’t done this is when how they are beating me seems very exploitable, and I have then just waited for the nuts and cleaned them out, which was a very good feeling and helped me reinforce that playing better always gets a better result then hoping to get lucky.
As I am trying to be less results oriented I have started keeping more of an eye on my All in EV rather than what I actually won. In several spots I have lost money, but it was a positive EV move so I am happy with my decision. I am also starting to put more faith in my reads at the river, meaning I can do some value betting rather than just checking it through for fear of someone slow playing me.
This did change a bit as play went on and I am starting to have a bit of frustration with the players I am playing with. At first I thought they were all just trying to be clever and slow play me. However as the games wore on I noticed they were all just extremely passive. Had one guy flop a full house, then never bet on any streets and as no one else did he only got the blinds. What is frustrating me about this is that I can't really read if I have the best hand or not. They also never really fold either, so I have taken to only betting when I am confident I am in the lead and the rest of the time checking it through. It isn’t ideal but it is working. Any suggestions welcomed.
Did have a slip back into old ways with the following hand

Graph

Was hoping to keep EV and Win line close to each other however had a hand where I just didn’t believe that the Villain had me beat as previous hands he hadn’t and taken the same line. So went all in, he called and I was only saved by a backdoor flush.

So dipped my toe in the water of fastforward, partpoker’s version of zoom, and it was one hell of a ride. Made two bad all in’s but other than that most all in’s were EV+. The problem I found with it was that it was far too tilting for me, too many variance occasions came up and the whole thing felt a lot more like gambling than playing poker. People also seemed to turn up to show down with such random hands that I was running into also sorts, sometimes winning sometimes losing, which made it really diffcult to play. A lot of it felt like you just sort of play your cards and ignore others as they all seemed like a bunch of maniacs with no real plan. Anyway I think that is enough of that for me and even though the profit spikes were nice I prefer a slow and steady climb, to the swing of zoom.

Even though I said I was going to be focusing on cash games, I still really enjoy MTT. So have been playing two bounty MTT the $0.55 and the $1.10. I really want to play in the $11 as previously I have one $180ish there, but it is too large for my bankroll. However the $11 does give a much better return on bounties, $0.55 gives $0.10 whereas $11 gives $5, maybe when my BR is bigger. So just sticking with the cheaper ones as a way to get some MTT experience without wrecking my bankroll for my main focus of cash games.
With this in mind I am also avoiding re-buying into the same tournament, which I have only broken once after going out 2nd hand with all-in with a FH on flop only for the board to pair again and get beaten by a better FH.

Then the hand that pretty much put me out of one of the bounty tournaments, just couldn’t get myself away from the flush draw. Still need to get more discipline, even though I think on implied odds it might have been close….(wishful thinking)

Graph
The bounties aren’t tracking properly so have just done my own table for the MTT.

Firstly my free trial ran out, so I have had to cough up some money to buy it. At first I was considering it was a lot compared to where my current bankroll is, then I checked my cash graph which reminded me I have lost way more then that just by playing on tilt ♦

I have been reading the articles and books and doing some research I have slowly built up my HUD from just having the players name and number of hands to this;

It has:
Name/Hands/BB/$ won in last 20 mins
VPIP/PFR/4bet/Fold to 4bet

I guess the only “different” one is the “$ won in last 20 mins”, I am using that as I have found that in NL2 people that are largely one way or the other seem to make some pretty manic decision and can be good people to win some chips off.

I have also given them all a colour range depending on if the stat is good or bad for me.

I am still working on unlocking the welcome bonus, however since switching back down to NL2 from NL25 it is going very slowly. I do have until mid december to unlock it all, so hopefully by then I will be at higher stakes so it will unlock faster.

I haven’t got anywhere on my mission for all final hands yet for the $25 reward, I did get excited as I did get a straight flush and it was a royal;

However it was in a MTT so didn’t count. At least I know they are out there ♦

I have almost finished “The mental game of poker” and it is really helping. I haven’t managed to do all of the suggested activities yet due to “real life” time constraints however I have started to identify some of the more common things that put me on tilt, and made some logical injections to help combat them. Will hopefully do a longer bit on my mental game when I have completed the activities, but this has been my most helpful one so far.

Situation: Losing flip after flip.
Tilt: Injustice tilt.
Logical injection: It is all maths and will balance out in a large enough sample, you have seen 9 blacks in a row on roulette, each flip has no effect on the previous one.

I have kept to posting hands for discussion,and I am finding all the feedback very useful. I am making a conscious effort not to just post hands where I think I made the right decision and lost but also occasions where my decisions weren’t quite right but I won. Not all losses are variance, Not all wins are skill
Have also got further with the strategy reading.

To avoid having to keep re depositing which I think is hindering my commitment to the BR as I “know” if I lose it i’ll just put more in, I am going to try and stick to the following extra rules for BR.
-No Fastforward.
-No MTT with buy-in above $1.10
-Max $4 on MTT per day, and can’t take me below my starting BR.
-Only one deposit per month, else just playing freerolls.

So I managed to get some normal speed cash games in on my last day before holidays. As I was trying to multitable I was between two buyins NL2 and NL4 due to the low number of tables available when i was playing. I was pretty happy with my play, and was trying not to see if I was up or down, more if I was making the right decisions. This is the graph for the few hands I played.

I have kept on dabbling the the MTT, and I did break my new rule of know buyins over $1.10 by buyin into the $5.50 powerfest $5k game. I am pretty happy that I did. I didn’t make it into the money but I got close and was very happy with all the hands I played. There were times that I went all in against smaller stacks and lost on the river and rather than my usual erratic play that would follow, I stuck to my tight play plan and clawed a good bit of it back. Unfortunately just before the bubble I was too short stacked and went in with pocket pairs which didn’t hold up in the end.
I also had a good run in the $1.10 bounty $400 GTD. For most of it I was playing well and was even chip leader when there was only 18 players left, however got a bit over confident and played 2 hands badly. They weren’t one after the other but I can see they were the mistakes that cost me going further than I did. I managed to place 12th, just short of the final table. My last hand I was stupid and tried to bluff a much larger stack and it didn’t work as he had a set of aces. Hoping for the final table next time.

Title: The mental game of poker 1 - Jared Tendler
Kindle price: £5.49
Should you buy it? Yes
Overview and thoughts:
Really good book. As a novice found a lot of value in the book and can see how it would help people who had been playing a lot longer as well. It is well structured so once read you can easily go back to certain bits as a refresher. My main concept I have taken away from this is that you can make the right decision and still lose in poker. This might be obvious to some people, but it is more how the book helps you to identify why and how this affects everyone individually which makes it such a stand out book. The narration by Jared is really good and I think having the stories from his clients really helps in reinforcing how good the techniques are. I also like that the last chapter tells you that you haven't mastered the mental game just because you have finished the book but need to put it into practice. That sums up the book if you work at the exercises it will help. If you put nothing in you won't get anything back. I would recommend this to any level of player but definitely to people similar to myself who have never competed in something where if you play well you can still lose in the short term.

Title: Essential poker math - Alton Hardin
Kindle price: £2.49 or free with kindle unlimited.
Should you buy it? Maybe.
Overview and thoughts:
Firstly I thought this book is well written and flows nicely. The reason it is only a maybe for should you buy it is I am not sure how much value the book itself adds. I have previous read the maths bits on this site as well as the walkthrough by w34z4l and I think if you got the maths from those this book wouldn't add anything. However for me even though I am pretty mathsy(accountant and electrical engineer) it didn't seem to stick. However since reading this book I feel a lot more confident with it all and will now be practising it on some of the hands from my HM database as well as hands from future sessions.
The book has a nice flow between written explanations which are then backed up with examples. It's appendix also comes with some good cheat sheets for whilst you are practising.

So back on day 4 I tried Zoom and decided I didn’t like the swings that came with it. When I came back from holiday I started playing normal cash games again. However on Partypoker couldn’t find enough NL2 tables to be able to even play 3 tables. So I was doing both NL2 and NL4, it was going ok but was still feeling very sluggish. Especially with my limited time right now. So off into the Zoom NL5 i ventured. After all my reading that I did of the holidays I started out pretty decent. I soon realised that my previous attempt didn’t go well because I was playing Zoom completely differently to how I would on normal, making calls and raise I would never try on normal speed. Also rushing all my decision just because it was Zoom.
This time round I have been taking more time with each decision and playing it as I would if it was just a normal table. I have also been 2 seating it. I am still pretty leaky, but in general have only had a few spews with silly calls/bluffs, but didn’t carried away and spew any more. I shall keep doing Zoom NL5 until I get a BR to go up, as I currently don’t really have the BR for NL5 but it is the lowest they do.

Graph

I would be interested in what people think of the graph, mainly to do with what my red line is doing. Should I be trying to have it higher or is it ok just letting it fluctuate below 0? I think it was heading down for a bit in the middle due to me walking away from unsuccessful bluff attempts, which I think is a positive else I would have probably lost more chips if I had kept betting through to showdown.

Yesterday I managed to get a bit of practice with the stuff learnt from “The Mental Game of Poker 1” regarding injustice tilt. I ended the day Net won $6.81 with EV adjusted Net won $14.22, so nearly 2 buy ins difference. But I kept my cool, and used some of the logical injections from the book. With this I was able to keep playing and put those hands behind me, and the graph for the day I think shows that I managed to keep heading in the right direction regardless.

Graph “EV hating on me”

Update: So for the second day in a row EV has killed me again a whole 1.5 buy in difference and today I can’t take it so have quit for the day already. Overall since start of blog the difference between net won and ev adjusted net won is about $15.

So decided to see what information I can start to use from HM2 now that I have bought it. So after a bit of a browse around I brought up the hole card review, and I think it looks pretty interesting. Would like some feedback on my assumptions but here goes;

The worst offenders are QQ and JJ with 504 BB lost between them. I think this is because I play them too hard, and also am reluctant to fold them even when an A or K hits the flop. I was considering at one point just folding JJ instantly as they seem to be the worst for me. But I think a better idea is just to learn to play them better. TT, 99, 88 i manage to play a lot better as I am happy to fold them when an over card lands, so just need to treat QQ and JJ more like that I guess. Thoughts?

77 and 55 look pretty bad, but for both of those it was a case of set over set in one hand each, so not too worried about that.

AJo/ATo/KJo/JTo again seem to be a problem for me. Like the QQ and JJ I would think it is due to my reluctance to fold when I am dominated.

K7o also seems to have a big loss to it of 119 bb. I can’t think why but my only assumption would be two pair beaten by another two pair, as in general I wouldn’t be playing K7o in most positions.

So overall I think my main goal should be to fold more. Fold Fold Fold.

Was a bit disappointed to come back from holiday and see that all of the featherweight Powerfest tournaments had ended as I was planing on playing a few more of them. In the end I just stuck with playing my usual “$0.55 - $150 GTD bounty” and “$1.11 - $400 GTD bounty”. I managed to cash twice since Wednesday, hower still down for MTT since the start of the blog, mainly due to not cashing the $5.50 Powerfest I entered at the start of the blog.

Graph for all MTT

With the MTT I have found, again like the cash games, that the reading I did over holidays has really been helping. The main point is from the Daniel Negreanu book, “You can’t win a tournament by only playing premium hands”. This I think has been my problem previously. I played too tight and by the time a good hand came round I either didn’t get action or I didn’t have the chips left for it to matter. Now I am not saying I can now play the proper small ball poker. However I have been making more “moves” and trying to pick up the odd pot. Another good thing I took away from it was if you make a move on the pot and think you are behind, sometimes you’ll get raised and you just have to walk way. Whereas previously I would of got suckered in with my own bluff and keep wasting chips.
I have also now learnt in my MTT yesterday that you can’t give up regardless of how low you get. This is best shown in a graph of my stack;

Graph - Never Give Up

That is right from $2,788 I managed to get back up to a peak of $550,000. Now I am not saying luck didn’t have a part to play in it (because it had a pretty large part), but choosing the right spots with my limited chips really paid off. Sometimes with people calling and winning the showdown and other times with people just letting me steal the blinds. The payout differences was $2 + $0.20 (bounty). Which is a large difference at the stakes I play.

So for MTT I am going to continue playing my usual two and just see if I can get more consistent results.

Haven’t read much more on the sites strategy section mainly due to being on holiday, but I am also currently preparing for an exam for my job in just over a weeks time so don’t really have any “Brain space” for more learning. I have tried to stay active ish in the hand discussion forum, but haven’t posted any hands as most of the big ones I have had have been more me being out and out wrong with my call rather than there being a better line to take.