Cuteraven poker stuff

[AbvUrPlayGrd]

Interesting read and makes sense(mostly). Thanks.

[CuteRaven]

Got some decent stacks going in NL 10 while no SNG were running (only about 30€ profit in the end though, I have a high variance style and was running bad earlier in the session )

[FreedoM]

[CuteRaven]

@FreedoMArrr! That's for sure the right approach on the online streets! 

I got my late salary today finally, so that's the end of having to withdraw from Unibet . In total I withdrew 850€. I have to be quite grateful for running good at the right time!

I was glad to get back to the SNG streets today (25€ HU and 5 man) and even happier to have a nice profitable session (about 200€ profit). My bankroll is 609.21€, so my bankroll would be 1459.21€ without any withdrawals. At this point I'm not sure if there is any point in depositing back, because I'm mostly playing the stakes that I would play anyway (maybe I would be taking shots at 50€ SNG if I had 1459€, but I might do it soon anyway ).

I haven't had a proper losing session in a while (barely any break-even ones either). I'm trying to stay mindful that running this well isn't normal. It's always quite hard to know exactly how you are running, and it's easy to start thinking that you are better/worse than you really are.

I noticed recently that I have been a little more tired than usual. I think it's probably some combination of the lessening sunlight, not exercising enough, and being quite busy in general. I might start some sort of challenge for myself to exercise more and more regularly. Probably it would be running/gym (I used to enjoy swimming quite a lot, but nowadays I don't like how the chlorine dries your skin), but I have to think about it a bit more.

 

[AbvUrPlayGrd]

Swimming is the best all round exercise. Just get an all-over body massage with moisturiser  win/win

As for running...I can't think of anything worse! I would rather get in the ring with Mike Tyson and have my ear bitten off!

 

[CuteRaven]

16 minutes ago, AbvUrPlayGrd said:

Swimming is the best all round exercise

Swimming is really nice! I love the feeling of gliding through water. I wish there was something similar without the chlorine (I like lake swimming but that's a summer thing). Maybe I just have to get over it and go anyway

18 minutes ago, AbvUrPlayGrd said:

Just get an all-over body massage with moisturiser 

Sounds good in almost any context

18 minutes ago, AbvUrPlayGrd said:

As for running..

I don't mind running on a nice trail (not tarmac, preferably in the woods with fresh air), but my problem has usually been that I'm tempted to start walking and enjoy the scenery. There's no similar "gear down" in swimming, you're either swimming or you are not swimming, you can't half swim

[GR1ZZL3R]

   I can't go swimming, too much of a hassle by public transport now, not that I'm a very good swimmer. I've never enjoyed running and been very bad on the exercise front but for the last few months I have started a walking regime, desperately late in the day but better late than never, gradually increasing and now up to 40 minutes 4 times a week. Wether winter curtails that I'll see, I've never been good in the cold. I download audio books onto my phone and listen while rambling (shambling) about. I've also adopted a fairly strict but not rigid keto diet just to see how it goes to get some weight off and try to get rid of my seemingly permanent brain fog. So far so good. 

[CuteRaven]

12 hours ago, GR1ZZL3R said:

I have started a walking regime

Sounds good, well done! Walking is nice, but the problem for me is that I usually have to walk at least about 2-3 hours until I start feeling like I've excersized properly, and most days I don't have time for that so I'm looking for something more vigorous (this wasn't a problem when I was working manual jobs where I would be on my feet for pretty much the whole shift, that's not really a thing anymore now with university). 40 mins walking is still good though and for sure much better than nothing.

Edit: I've also noticed that you can learn to enjoy walking in really shit weather if you dress properly (e.g waterproof coat and rubber boots with 2 socks layered to keep socks dry and you feel invincible from the rain :D). It's a bit of an adjustment but possible.

 I've noticed that proper excersize for sure lessens mental fog and makes you feel better on the mental health front and in general . That's my main motivation for the excersize challenge, I don't care as much about looking better etc. compared to that.

Edited September 17, 2022 by CuteRaven

[CuteRaven]

Bankroll is 719.89€. Most of my SNG sessions recently have been kind of break-evenish or slightly winning. Still no losing sessions of any notable size.

Here's a fun hand:

I limped in preflop and villain checked back. Flop texture I would usually cbet a lot but not every time. Villain called my cbet (they seemed to call my cbets often).

Turn came A and went check-check.

River is the 7 of diamonds. I think villain would usually bet 6x, but mostly check Kx and 7x and most Ax would shove pre. So when villain bets river I think it's mostly 6x or bluffs (also I expect 6x to go really big when you have such a narrow but nutted value range, personally I might even shove 6x in villains shoes against players that aren't nits, against nits I'm using that sizing as a bluff because they fold their whole range ).

The bet size, value range and villains flop floatyness being what it is, I make a pretty loose hero call.

Here's the result:

Spoiler

Villain seemed to stop bluffing me after that.

Life has been maybe even weirder than poker, the air quality near my apartment has been bad recently and one day I had enough because I couldn't sleep properly and I decided to go camping for the night. I've been sleeping in the woods a few nights in a row now . Luckily Finland has lots of quiet woods at the outskirts of cities and I have good gear. And luckily I'm gonna move away from there soonish. On the other hand it's quite refreshing to wake up in nature even though it's inconvenient, so I can't complain too much. The air seems better today so I might actually sleep at home tonight. People seem to live in polluted areas like everything is normal, maybe I'm the one who is crazy?

School is going fine too but I still have some bad study habits from the past that I need to figure out. I haven't started going for runs yet, I've been quite busy recently so that will have to wait a bit

[Stubbe-Unibet]

@CuteRaven sounds like your neighbor is a coal power plant and you've got a highway in your backyard  just how bad is it?

I grew up on the countryside with a forest in the backyard and maximum 2-3 cars driving by from midnight till 6am. Moved to Malta with terrible air quality and didn't really notice it  - maybe it was due to being intoxicated most of the time in the beginning 

[Livertool]

1 hour ago, CuteRaven said:

People seem to live in polluted areas like everything is normal, maybe I'm the one who is crazy?

Polluted areas? Here? Maybe you are just nuts

If you are living in flat and air in there is bad, maybe taloyhtiö is saving energy costs with fiddling air ventilation?

[FreedoM]

[CuteRaven]

It's in the central city area with lots of construction going on (and cars) so I think it's worse than it would normally be. But yeah probably I'm just more sensitive than most too or I find bad air more disturbing than most (I've usually been the one to complain when visiting Athens or London). I also maybe have been having a mild cold that has made it worse.

1 hour ago, Livertool said:

If you are living in flat and air in there is bad, maybe taloyhtiö is saving energy costs with fiddling air ventilation?

That's a good point, I did wonder about the ventilation myself too, but I don't think there's anything I can do about it anyway

[AbvUrPlayGrd]

1 hour ago, CuteRaven said:

It's in the central city area with lots of construction going on (and cars) so I think it's worse than it would normally be.

It's most likely from the construction work, especially if it also involves some demolition work. 

[CuteRaven]

10 hours ago, AbvUrPlayGrd said:

especially if it also involves some demolition work. 

It's not so much demolition, but lots of machines with exhaust pipes and some digging (raises dust). I think the construction makes it much worse but it doesn't contribute all of it.

For whatever reason I'm probably also bothered by it way more than most with similar symptoms: slight lung sensation, mild cough etc (I mean a lot of people smoke for their whole life, I'm not judging them but it's not a habit I would be able to hold for very long). I think it's something quite psychological.

[CuteRaven]

Bankroll 1024.39€

Today I ran hotter than I've ran in a long time (and I feel like I've been running quite good for a long time now anyway). I think I played 33 25€ HU SNG and won 24 of them (if I counted correctly).

I slept home last night, the air doesn't feel perfect still but better than it was a few days ago. Perhaps the air pollution gave me super powers for running hotter than the sun? Isn't that how superpowers work, you need to be exposed to something unhealthy first to get them?

I also got into a 125x 1€ Hexapro extreme but I busted 3rd (lost most of my chips with AT vs KJ all in preflop).

[Jami-Unibet]

There isn't that much to say as far as my recent poker playing. My volume has been pretty low, I was busy/tired on quite many days and usually I don't like playing that much if that's the case. My bankroll is 1262.56€ (basically all of that is from 25€ and 50€ SNG, both 5 man and HU).

My bankroll has kind of been up and down, it went to about 1400€ at best and then dropped down to something like 900€ at it's worst (probably some tired playbad and puntbluffing was involved there, I was also running bad in a pretty annoying way, it seemed like whenever I chose to bluff my opponents just had AA or some nuttish hand which made me feel like a big idiot ).

I also played the Supernova on Sunday but busted close to the bubble. I lost with KK vs AKo in a preflop all-in, pretty standard stuff, I would've had a huge stack had it gone the other way :D. I still feel like I don't quite now exactly what I'm doing 9 handed, I don't really have a great intuition yet for exactly how nitty you are meant to play in some spots.

I did make a nice royal flush a few days ago in a 25€ 5 man SNG so gotta post it on the blog of course , big cooler that went my way, sorry QueenofGame whoever you are (the hand itself wasn't very interesting, I 3bet preflop from the BB and villain called, flop small cbet and villain called, turn I check, and 4bet jammed it and we got it in).

Maybe I'll request my poker results from the previous quarter and see if there's any interesting results to post. As far as real life goes, I've been going running in the forest and to the gym a few times now, it definitely feels like a welcome addition to my life 

[CuteRaven]

Thanks for moving my previous blog post to the correct location @Jami-Unibet (seems like it took some work). I'll try to find my own blog in the future

Bankroll is 1374.29€. I've put in some good volume recently, I'm already about halfway to L5 when last quarter it took me almost the whole quarter to reach that loyalty level. It's been a bit of a struggle recently, I was running pretty bad for a few days but today I managed to sunrun and win about 10 buyins.

I'm still regularly making some big mistakes and some days I play quite badly I think. I tend to be overbluffy when I'm not paying attention. Trying to visualize ranges (and sleeping better) helps me keep that in check a bit. I think visualizing ranges or understanding range composition is pretty crucial if you want to play a strong strategy.

I'm still paying off the tight regs too much, there's some spots where I probably should be folding pretty much my whole range (for exploitative reasons) but I just can't get myself to do it. Here's an example from today:

I think it's a pretty trivial turn fold. I don't think this kind of player will bluff overcards for 2 streets multiway at all (maybe 56s can bluff but I don't think this player would have that even), it's just an overpair 90% of the time and this should be an easy fold (also lol at that river sizing, I think it's usually a bit of a tell). Maybe 98s or 87s is value shoving turn but probably not, and even if they are it's still only a few hands that I beat.

If I'm folding this, I'm folding everything that isn't 44 or A4s or maybe 54s (or 88 if I just call it preflop for some reason), but none of that matter of course, I need to stop thinking about that.

In general I need to trust my reads more, because usually when I ignore them it ends up badly (there could be some confirmation bias in there too but still).

I made the call and villain had QQ here.

Edited October 12, 2022 by CuteRaven

[100HourChallenge]

On 9/15/2022 at 10:04 PM, CuteRaven said:

Got some decent stacks going in NL 10 while no SNG were running (only about 30€ profit in the end though, I have a high variance style and was running bad earlier in the session )

Sweet background!!

[CuteRaven]

12 minutes ago, 100HourChallenge said:

Sweet background!!

Yeah it's a great one! I've been using it for a long time and it feels very strange to play if I change it now (the hand replayer doesnt show it for some reason)

[AbvUrPlayGrd]

20 hours ago, CuteRaven said:

I'll try to find my own blog in the future

[CuteRaven]

I've been on a pretty brutal downswing. Yesterday I lost about 500€ and today a bit more. BR is at 805.73€

Most of that was  in 25€ HU SNG and some of that was in 25€ 5 man SNG.

I didn't realize before that there were free solver tools out there . There's GTOwizard where you can look at solutions for free and also some free and open source solver called Texassolver (I tried it out but seems like my laptop is too much of a potato to make use of solvers). GTO is becoming very accessible

Yesterday I was wondering if I was doing something wrong since a 20 buyin+ downswing in one session seemed quite unlikely (it's easily a bottom 5% run), so after the session I spent some time recreating my biggest losing hands (and later biggest winning hands). I was quite happy that I wasn't really making many mistakes in the HU SNG. I learnt that I should give up a few more bluffs on the river, 3bet more A high flops when I'm the small blind player (in single raised pots or limped pots), and fix some slightly loose preflop shoves where the shove was +EV, but there was a better way to play the hand (maybe some of those shoves were tilt).

Mostly the hands looked good though, and a pretty big downswing was inevitable with the way I was running. There were some hands that the solver thought were not so good, but I thought made sense exploitatively (and vice versa where the solver thought they were ok but that I think were kinda misplays against specific opponents).

I think the biggest thing that I was doing wrong was something that the solver couldn't properly measure. I was mostly playing 3 tables and probably 2 tables is optimal for me. So I was probably not making the best reads and paying enough attention to things like timing tells (while maybe giving off some) and game flow. I was playing pretty solidly but probably not taking the "feel" aspects of the game into account well enough. I think there's a lot of edge in those kinds of things that's hard to measure.

If you played against me and saw some leaks I would be curious to know though

As the avatar from the past few days suggests, I'm not really going to be playing on weekends in the medium term because of social stuff

Using a "solver program" for the first time made me think, I tend to like games that are hard to solve and where there is a lot of room for intuition. I guess I have learnt indirectly from solvers before by watching Youtube videos, but in general I think I've gotten my game to a pretty good level without them. If anyone can sign up for and use a solver program to improve in, it really levels the playing field, to the detriment of "intuitive players". So that makes HU SNGs (and also cash maybe games for example?) less attractive. I think SNGs with ICM and tournaments are much better in that regard, so I'll have to think about what game types I want to focus on more in the future. I'm not saying that you can't make a profit in HU SNG, but it's so easy to become so good nowadays.

Or maybe these are just downswing ramblings

 

[monkeyheaven]

I’m certainly concerned that it’s possible to one table and input into solvers in real time, making them free removes any financial barrier to doing this, and it’s hard to detect. 
 

As for free solvers levelling the field, it will have an impact but maybe not huge, those committed to improving will have bought solvers years ago.  There’s a long journey from downloading a free solver to learning a solid strategy that you are then capable of applying reliably.  Most give up, or aren’t capable of getting there and just introduce new leaks in their game.  
 

Thoughts of a “feel” player, so maybe I’m wrong

[CuteRaven]

22 hours ago, monkeyheaven said:

m certainly concerned that it’s possible to one table and input into solvers in real time,

Yeah same. Sometimes I have been suspicious while playing but after playing for a while more I've noticed some mistakes. But if there are players using RTA only on later streets or in bigger pots for example, it would probably be quite hard to detect.

22 hours ago, monkeyheaven said:

As for free solvers levelling the field, it will have an impact but maybe not huge, those committed to improving will have bought solvers years ago.

I thought about it some more and I think you are right in many ways. It feels like the HU regs are a bit tougher on average than they were in 2020, but there could be many more important causes for this (like the corona boom subsiding, winter volumes not quite there yet, me running well in 2020 without knowing etc...).

On the other hand I would be surprised if most of the 25€ HU regs weren't using solvers, especially now that they are free and so accessible (presolved stuff run on potato machines too). When you are trying to beat competition that gets instant accurate answers afterwards on what sort of mistakes they made in the session, it gets tough (especially with the "small" game tree of HU SNG). Mostly the sort of exploitability that you are left with is trying to figure out in what ways they are implementing ranges slightly wrong (usually turn or river) or taking shortcuts because of multitabling (and timing tells/game flow/tilt sometimes with certain kinds of regs). It's not that much to go on but still something I guess...

Hmm...not sure.

[SkilfulPoker]

On 9/23/2022 at 9:25 PM, CuteRaven said:

usually been the one to complain when visiting Athens or London

Ha, don't visit Albania! I love the capital of the country, but omg the air quality. 

Tbh I don't think it matters if it's your sensitivity or really is that bad - the great thing is you went to live in the forest I love it!