From Poker Donk To Winning Monk

[P0kerM0nk]

@KrustyTheClown If I was still living in Belgium I'd be hating poker so much by now lol

Requested last months stats and played 30k hands at 100NL and about 8 buy ins down, running at -2.6bb/100, wouldn't say it's terrible but not good either.

Also requested all cash stats for first 6 months of this year, all stakes and I am up €220 over 156k hands, I've turned it around, I'm officially a winning poker player 😆 thank feck for rakeback eh!

Currently back at 50NL, bankroll dipped around 1.8k and just decided to go back to 50NL and make it up to 2.5k again before going back to 100NL and that's what the bankroll is sitting at for now, 2.5k. Actually weird how I hated life at 100NL not winning or hitting much then went back to 50NL and felt like a breeze so easy, pretty bizarre. Probably have to focus a bit more on table selection at 100NL, pool is smaller but there are still enough recs about but need to be aware not to keep sitting at reg tables. When I was watching that "play it smart poker" on YouTube he somewhere says that 90%+ of your profit comes from recs so it actually shows you how bad it is to keep sitting on a full reg table.

Currently at my 3rd €100 from my €500 playthrough and just passed loyalty lvl3.

 

Have started the carrot poker school (CPS) course from Pete Clarke so that will keep me busy for a good while. 

[P0kerM0nk]

2 weeks since last update, have played about 12k hands so not the most volume tbh. At loyalty lvl 4 now with 100k xp so far and almost cleared my 4th €100 of my €500 playthrough. Currently have 27k BP too.

Bankroll sitting just above 2.6k and been a bit of a struggle, up for the month... for now at least.

Working my way through Pete Clarkes course and it is pretty good, done about 8 videos out of 30 or something. Pretty dense theoretical course so just going over them all to start and then will re do them and take notes / write a summery of what to remember.

Wouldn't say I'm running the best again lately, remember last week, first day after work and started at 50NL, lost two pots in the first 10min KK vs AA and AQ vs AA (called down tripple on Qxx flop) lol. Then another day, back at 100NL, I lost almost 350bb to one villain in 4 different hands where I had KK 4 times !! and lost them all, KK vs AA twice, KK vs AJ and KK vs AQ where he both managed to hit an A. Sometimes you can't believe the crap you see lol. Not much luck with sets either. 

But after all that I'm still up so guess that's a good thing. Will have to increase my volume if I want to make loyalty lvl 6, I do have another 12 days off start of September so prob have to do some work then. 

I'll post again at the end of the month or when I get my stats.

Edited July 21, 2023 by P0kerM0nk

[P0kerM0nk]

And that's July done and dusted!

End bankroll is €4,363 but I actually have to add €120 I wasted on sport bets, for once I bet on Djokovic to win and then he doesn't, what a prick 😅

So basically ended up at €4,483 making it €2,353 profit for the month of July, this includes €400 of my €500 playthrough bonus (which is now done as the other €100 was cleared in June) and also €67 won in cash drops on the tables.

Requested my stats and won €1505.8 over 19,571 hands aka 7.69bb/100 which is pretty good imo, had one amazing session where I played 1h 15min and won 7 buy ins.

Paid €1,642 in rake.

There is a bit of a discrepancy between 'my stats' and the ones I get from Unibet as I keep track of my bankroll per day played meaning all poker before I go to my bed which can be 2am for example but obviously for Unibet those 2 hours after midnight are calculated within the next days stats. + there is also some currency fluctuation going about as my main account is in pounds £.

Loyalty wise, I just got past lvl 5 and I'm actually on par to make lvl 6 so I can keep the BP multiplier. Currently have 43,860 BP so getting close to another €500 playthrough once I get through my current bonuses.

Wasn't sure if I'd be able to clear this RAKE 1700 one but I played a decent session of 5h or something and I'm close to 20% so might give this a shot. If I see I won't make it I will just ditch it for the next one depending on timing.

I've also taken off £1,170 / €1,350 so my bankroll sits at €3,000 now which I think is a good starting bankroll for 100NL, 30 buy ins should do it. I wanted to take some off so I can see some results of me playing poker instead of maybe have a losing streak and lose some money not being able to withdraw anything which makes me feel like I'm playing poker for nothing sometimes lol. Just a mental thing really for motivation 😋

Still making my way through Peter Clarke's course, done about 1/3 but will have to go back and re do them all as I said before to take notes etc. Solid course imo. Prob takes me another month at least 😆

Won't have an actuall holiday till the 27th of August for some decent volume but hope to keep the results going. I don't want to be too confident but I like the way my game has evolved and I do play better than before. More thinking about the hands and less auto play and trying to keep my head cool when sessions go terrible. 

[P0kerM0nk]

Tough ride so far this month, since I had that 7 buy in win day it has been really rocky. Probably running the worst I have so far this year, down 10 buy ins atm but in reality it's like 16 as I have 6 buy-ins back from loyalty and promo's. Lost 11 buy ins one day and managed to get most back the days after but then it went 💩again.

Hard to deal with this continues running bad and not flopping anything at all. Losing AA 3 way, AK vs AJ, AK vs KJ, AK vs A3, losing with flopped sets and straights where I have like 80-90% equity lol, losing vs fish who do absolutely weird stuff reraising my value hands with crap and donk betting with crap and I just let them bluff but then somehow they magically get there hitting 2 pair with A5o etc lol.

I know it's part of the game but it's depressing nonetheless and my game falls off a cliff when I run like this. Not as bad as it once was 🤭but still terrible. If I was a better player I probably be breakeven now instead of being 10 buy ins down.

Funny enough there have been a few videos recently about running bad and how you should handle it. Guess running bad is infectious lol.

 

 

 

And I'm guilty of calling more or bluffing more as a way to compensate instead of just keep on playing hands in a way I would normally do. Or getting in pots I shouldnt be in to start with.

Anyway, 4 more days to work this month (starting mid next week)  and then off for 12 days so hopefully I can turn things around. Still going through the theory course as well.

Currently almost cleared a RAKE 950, GET 95 and next one is RAKE 2100, GET 210 lol, shows you how much I've actually played lately. I do actually play more when I run bad chasing my losses 😂 Have 55k BP so enough for another €500 playthrough bonus as well at some point, not sure I'll make that RAKE 2100 tbh. Played almost 25k hands this month. As much as I did last month.

Run good, where are you? 😭

[P0kerM0nk]

And still running absolutely shockingly bad, must be the worst ever now, down 33 buy ins but only 20 in reality because of bonuses playthrough etc etc... still a shocker. Ready to just give up tbh, not worth the hassle, bloody depressing not winning any hands, can't win flips, amount of boats I've lost to quads lately feck me... like you can't win vs some people ever, some fish play any 2 and just hit board after board and if I play every 2 hands I lose 5 stacks in 2min lol

Like this nonsense vs an aggro whale who had min 3b preflop,  flop the nuts, terrible turn and what a river... oh wait, ofc he has a T  crap game

Yesterday ran AK in to AA twice and AQ in to AA vs a fish, have lost AK vs 54o and stuff like that, never ending.

Might be my last post who knows, seriously fed up with it.

Only good thing that happened was I had a deposit bonus for 50 spins on w/e slot and won €32 (no wagering) from 50x €0.05 spins lol, should maybe just put my last money on slots.

[HardGain]

damn, that crazy. i feel your pain 😞
After few tough weeks I also don't feel to play. I hope you will not go that way. Take a break, clear your head and come back stronger. 

Even this last post about bad beats and crazy set ups is negative, makes us other realise that anything can happend even in very very unlikely. 

[FreedoM]

@P0kerM0nk When You're Tired, Don't Quit, Take a Break!

[KrustyTheClown]

Any chance you are back on the grind? 🙂
Loved reading your blog and think you're definitely among the better cash game players at Unibet.
Anyway, good luck fellow Belgian.

[P0kerM0nk]

@KrustyTheClown Haven't really stopped playing 🙃

Bankroll dwindled to 1k by the end of September something and had enough of it, decided to take it all off again and start from scratch. Ended up playing bad again reacting bad to running bad.

Had lots of Bonus Points left so bought a €1000 50NL ticket needing 3000 flops to be seen. Also bought a €500 playthrough bonus and only cleared 1 and a half out of 5 so far, need to clear it by January the 4th.

Have been busy with work a lot as had some training on for a month so volume has been low.

Started playing the 6th of October and finished this morning, had a good session last night bumping up my bb/100 for sure. I see a flop almost every 6 hands. Too bad I didn't hit the 2k lol. Mainly trying to only play 4 tables to keep maximum focus but I do sometimes add a cheeky 5th or 6th looking for better tables but then end up playing them all as can't decide which ones to leave 😅

Played 17,717 hands, up €984.27 = 11.11 bb/100

Learning theory has been slow as well, still need to go through most of Peter Clarke's course, and will end up buying his new course too, course about mass data exploits which looks like another good course. Kinda hoping for a Black Friday or Xmas discount at some point 😄

I've started with writing a summary of every course lecture/subject in a small book, easier to revisit it witouth skimming through a 1 hour video each time and will give me a nice 'poker bible' once I've been through all the videos and even other future theory I want to note down.

Back using GTO wizard too but mostly using the trainer and not really studying spots atm. Again, lacking a bit of motivation on my days off, I do work 12h days and nights so often too tired to be doing theory. But have used it at work a few times as GTO wizard does work on your phone too.

Also started playing on PartyPoker, deposited £500 and have a £400 deposit bonus to clear before the end of the year. Mainly playing Fast Forward (Zoom) and started on $10NL (site is in dollars), was wanting to make it to 1k first but then got bored so moved to 25NL 😂. Have just under £900 in the account now and 3/10 bonus awards cleared (10 installments of £40 each), also had some weekly cashback so not all pure profit, maybe £200 up from actual table winnings but it all counts towards the bankroll!

Good thing about the Fast Forward is that I can play it at work as I can sit in and out all the time 😋

Unibet will mainly only be played on my pc at home but I also do play 2 Fast Forward tables sometimes. At work it is just one table, enough action anyway.

So @KrustyTheClown, hope this update will do you, plans for the rest of the year are just clearing these bonuses, keep focused and do some GTO Wizard and those courses. Am away on holiday early December and only meant to work 8 days next month but maybe do some overtime, who knows but should have some more time for poker.

[SShcherbyna]

2 hours ago, P0kerM0nk said:

11.11 bb/100

You're cool, man! 👍

[P0kerM0nk]

@SShcherbyna Just checked and if I don't include my last nights +5.5 buy-in session I ran at 8.26 bb/100, still decent.

[Muflon]

On 11/17/2023 at 6:27 PM, P0kerM0nk said:

Kinda hoping for a Black Friday or Xmas discount at some point 😄

Starts this thursday, valid until next tuesday, 25% off.

GL at the tables.

[P0kerM0nk]

@Muflon Just came here to post the same, I follow his weekly videos on YouTube so won't have missed it 😋

[P0kerM0nk]

Very good video explaining variance:

 

And bonus video 🤯

 

[GR1ZZL3R]

You don't update enough, I don't think any of us do, but nice videos. 

Bonus question!

                             Shuffle thoroughly and deal a normal 52 card deck of cards and take note of their sequence. Shuffle thoroughly again and take note again. How many cards are likely to be in the exact same place as the first run?

Bonus bonus question!    

                             If there are 60 cards in the deck are there likely to be more, the same, or fewer cards in the same position?

Bonus bonus bonus question! 

                             What about a 40 card deck? Or 30?

Two paracetamol tablets for the first correct answer!

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by GR1ZZL3R

[SShcherbyna]

9 hours ago, P0kerM0nk said:

Very good video explaining variance:

The interesting thing is that we cannot set our winrate exactly in the simulation, because our winrate is not "real", but some branch from a bunch of options, that is, we cannot know the zero point of coordinates from which to start the simulation, which makes the possible variance even greater than the simulation shows.

[SShcherbyna]

9 hours ago, GR1ZZL3R said:

Bonus question!

The intuitive answer is that the smaller the deck, the more cards on average will be in place. But the correct answer is that it is the same number regardless of the deck. This is if I remember this problem well, which I heard about 15 years ago.

I'm too lazy to do the calculations (and it's not a fact that I will be able to), so you can keep the pills for yourself 😁

[GR1ZZL3R]

6 hours ago, SShcherbyna said:

it is the same number regardless of the deck. 

Correct so far! 🤨

[P0kerM0nk]

On 12/1/2023 at 5:38 PM, GR1ZZL3R said:

You don't update enough, I don't think any of us do, but nice videos. 

Not that much to update lately, just been trying to grind getting through my bonuses.

Currently at around 50% of my €500 bonus (5x €100) on Unibet and got to clear the rest before New Year.

On PartyPoker I have cleared 50% as well of my welcome bonus which ends at the end of the month too. Have made little money on Party so far, although my bankroll has almost doubled, most is from the welcome bonus and the weekly cashback. I'm up like £40 in real terms lol. Running pretty bad lately and not particularly great on Unibet either but I seem to survive easy enough, my bankroll hasn't suffered, it just hasn't moved forward much.

Too many silly hands not going my way. And I would love to be able to see my winrate with AA, I think I'm about break even on Unibet lol, not just all ins but postflop it's like people hit the nuts so often it's mental.

Recs calling squeezes or 4b OOP with a big % of their stack and then somehow flop the nizzles.

Coldcalls 3b, then I called 2 bets and jammed the riv myself and then you see the hand and it's like, wtf.

 

Can't remember action, possibly also coldcalled 3b and money went in on the flop somehow lol. Very poor at hitting my draws again lately, hey ho.

 

Again think the money went in on the flop, weird stuff lol.

 

All in on the turn...

 

And more of these type of hands, don't take a screen every time, it's the way things go and not too bothered with it as long as I get back to a winning streak soon 😄

And a few straight flushes and royals:

 

Sometimes I get a bonus for free spins if I deposit a minimum of €50 which I take if it's given in straight cash as why wouldn't you. Get some decent runs and free money at times, I guess they somehow crank up the odds for the bonus as I played once on another time and just went through £80 with barely winning £5 in total, and that was the end of that! 😂

 

Away on holiday for a week from tomorrow so won't be much poker going on but I will try to do some theory here or there. And then 8 more days to work for the rest of the month so get through the bonuses before the New Year and do some more theory and that's about it for the year. I will ask my 50NL stats at the end of this quarter and see what it looks like, won't be the 11bb/100 but wasn't expecting that anyway but as long as we are moving forward I'm happy.

 

And about the bonus questions, I'll go against what has been said and seemingly confirmed? but I say the more cards the fewer will be in the same place after a shuffle. The bigger the chaos, the smaller the probability.

Or is the logic that if you have a 10 card deck you have 1/10 chance of a card going back at the same spot but in a 1000 card deck it's 1/1000 chance so fewer but you could look at it from another angle and say that in a 10 card deck you have 10 chances of a card going back at the same spot but you have 1000 chances so more in the 1000 card deck 🤷‍♂️

[GR1ZZL3R]

Nicely detailed report, some run good some bad but that's poker. How do you get so many straight flushes, I seem to be only getting quads just lately. 🙄 I particularly liked this one against a reg tagged red for danger!

 

2 hours ago, P0kerM0nk said:

And about the bonus questions,  

The bigger the chaos, the smaller the probability.

Starter Tip: With a pack of 1 card there will always be one card in the same position after each shuffle, an average of one.With a pack of two, half the time there will be two cards in the same place, half the time zero, an average of one. Keep doing this for ever increasing sizes of packs of cards, (I bet you don't get to 52,) and you'll see the pattern. 🙂

[CuteRaven]

On 12/1/2023 at 7:38 PM, GR1ZZL3R said:

 Shuffle thoroughly and deal a normal 52 card deck of cards and take note of their sequence. Shuffle thoroughly again and take note again. How many cards are likely to be in the exact same place as the first run?

Interesting question!

On 12/3/2023 at 9:01 PM, GR1ZZL3R said:

Starter Tip: With a pack of 1 card there will always be one card in the same position after each shuffle, an average of one.With a pack of two, half the time there will be two cards in the same place, half the time zero, an average of one. Keep doing this for ever increasing sizes of packs of cards, (I bet you don't get to 52,) and you'll see the pattern.

Probability of no cards being in same place:

1 card pack: 0

2 card pack: 1/2

3 card pack: 1/3 (2 permutations out of 6) = 0.333

4 card pack: 3/8 (9 permutations out of 24) = 0.375

5 card pack: 11/30 (44 permutations out of 120) = 0.3667

6 card pack: 53/144 (265 permutations out of 720) = 0.3655

You could go on if you wanted to, basically you can get the answer for the next deck based on calculations from the previous decks.

Lets say you want to count the amount of permutations that fulfill the criteria "in a six card deck exactly 2 cards remain in the same place". First you would count the number of ways in which you can choose 2 cards from the deck to be "immobilized" (in this case ncr(6,2)=15). Then you multiply it by the number of 4 card permutations where none of the remaining 4 cards stay in the same place (previously found to be 9 permutations out of 24).

So the answer for the case (deck=6, immobilized=2) is 15*9=135 (out of 720 total)

To get the probability of no cards being in the same place in a deck size of for example size 6, you subtract all the other possibilities from the total amount of permutations (which is 6 factorial = 720).

You could keep going like this up to 52 and then take the expected value from all the possible 52-deck "immobilization cases" to get the average amount of cards that stay in the same place. Probably it should be done with some script, would take many hours manually.

But maybe there is a much better way to calculate it 🤣

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by CuteRaven

[CuteRaven]

On 12/2/2023 at 5:00 AM, SShcherbyna said:

But the correct answer is that it is the same number regardless of the deck

I think you are probably right and that same number is an average of 1 card that is in the same place regardless of deck size.

[GR1ZZL3R]

9 hours ago, CuteRaven said:

On 12/2/2023 at 3:00 AM, SShcherbyna said:

But the correct answer is that it is the same number regardless of the deck

I think you are probably right and that same number is an average of 1 card that is in the same place regardless of deck size.

 

The simplest calculation is by asking what are the odds of a particular card being in the same position after a shuffle, say the   There are 52 possible positions for it, so the odds are 1/52. This applies to each and every card, so you can see the odds of any card remaining in the same position are 1/52. There is a much more detailed work through but the same result is obtained, on average for any size deck one card will appear in the same position. 

[P0kerM0nk]

Update time again, requested my stats this morning and got a swift reply, unibet support is on it this 1st of January.

First off, I asked for my 50NL stats since I ended my "2x 50NL ticket challenge" up to the 31st giving me a bigger sample of 50NL hands in total, have played 52k hands with a profit of €2,763 giving me a winning rate of 10.6 bb/100.

For December, I also played a few hands at 100NL, 2,500 hands total, more than I thought. This was actually a funny thing as I always join tables from the mainpage as the last game you played is linked there so you can jump straight in but one of the nights at the end of the night I just checked 100NL to see who the regs were there and which ones were playing on 50NL. Now, the next day I just jumped straight in and didn't realise I was playing 100NL till after a good 30min and then I decided to keep playing and ended up 5 buy ins 😄

In total I'm up €2,550 in December + a few €100 playthrough bonuses so was a good month. Been running pretty decent which helps, all in luck was 28 losses vs 53 wins. Probably up close to 3k with the few deposit bonuses where I won a few bob on the slots with the free spins but I lost track of it all tbh so not too sure apart from the €2.550.

Loyalty multiplier is back to 1 now as didn't make it to lvl6 but was too far away anyway. Almost 90k BP and not too sure if I'll buy a ticket or 2 again or just playthrough bonuses. I have a RAKE 350, GET 88 to clear in the next 2 weeks first.

Still going through the theory course of Pete Clark, only about halfway through, I'm just slacking a ton but it does take ages to view it and make a summery of it after.

Party poker is just a disaster lol, ended up with £1.2k but as I said before most coming from the sign up bonus and rakeback after my initial deposit of £500. They have a weird jump in stakes on the fast fold variant which is that they don't have a 50nl, just straight from 25nl to 100nl which I ended up playing but ran terrible as hell, lost like 4 buy ins straight in the first session with silly hands, one of them being all in pre AQ vs AJ but what do you do. Then kind of tilted it of bankroll wise as ended up with only $260 now. I don't think my brain works well in this format for some reason and or people play a lot nittier in general, especially the regs. I had the same impression on 888.

Not sure for the current plan but I think I'll stay on 50NL for now whilst I go through the rest of the poker courses and might give 100NL a shot again on Unibet after that, keeping it at 4 tables for more focus.

Might also give GGpoker a shot, it does look like a good player pool there too and never played there so can clear a welcome bonus again. Main volume will stay on Unibet for now though.

[P0kerM0nk]

For those that are aware of my desktop client / windows issue, still no solution. Can't access the client for whatever crapreason. Does my nut in, to make it even worse I just bought a €500 playthrough before this happened which is now wasting away. I can play on mobile or in the webbrowser but that's just a waste of my time, can't tile tables and can't open more than 4.

I already spent hours looking for a solution and trying things out and the last thing I can think of is resetting my pc again, which I really cba to do. So if nothing changes by the end of the month I'm just taking my bankroll off and that's it. Souldestroying this.