CuteRaven

I had a decent session today. I busted all the tournaments that I played, but thanks to a 30€ stack on one Banzai 1€ table, my bankroll now sits at 290,67€. I also had an ok sized stack on the other Banzai table but I lost it all in this hand: http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/9851131 (the replayer is a bit buggy with sidepots but the player with JT won the whole pot against my QQ). I might have made some sizing mistakes with my 3bet preflop or my flop bets, but the stack sizes and the fact that on the flop I am betting into a hand with a sidepot (which disincentivises bluffs) makes it harder to choose big sizes. But maybe I should have just gone all in preflop in retrospect. I had quite a big stack in the beginning of the €4000 E70 UOS high (the 25€ buy in one that I got a ticket for yesterday), but because of rapidly increasing blinds and some pots that I lost, it did not last.

Thank you @Brocky ! That's encouraging to hear especially from someone with your results :D Today was quite a good day poker results wise! I was playing some tournaments because of the second stage of the February mission (where you have to play a tournament 3 days in a row). I won the 2€ buy in €100 singularity for about 30€. I also played NL 1 Banzai today and probably won a net amount of about 25€ from those tables. I played a Unibet online series satellite thinking it would complete the Valentine mission, but I guess the satellites don't count. However I won a 25€ UOS ticket. Maybe I will use that ticket tomorrow, lets see :D. The bankroll is now at 273,61€

How many Hexas have you played so far?The rake and variance of Hexas are pretty brutal. But you seem dedicated and like you definately know quite well what you are doing! Your ROI looks ok. Good luck, sail the seas of variance and at some point you will probably get out of the storm :)

Bankroll is now 233.77€, mostly thanks to some good Banzai action. I also played some tournaments because of the missions. I ran deep in the €2 buy in 100€ singularity but busted it with this hand against the eventual tournament winner (maybe about 25 players remaining with about 10 places paid, I was around the 3rd to 5th biggest stack): Banzai also saw some interesting action. The biggest pot I played was against a pretty active player who was not afraid to bluff big and play a lot of big pots in general.

@ReCorpH Ok. I'll remember that next time.

@Livertool Is that a video of our creepy future GTO bot overlords, who are here to suck out our money and souls? :o @Joco Just registered Annabelle28, gonna use it as my Banzai alias now :D

@4soul I ended up later sitting on the same Banzai table as you because I was unable to sleep. I saw the same players there. Later on when all of the other players left and it was only me and Annabelle26 sitting on the table, a player called Annabelle25 (yes, not Annabelle23 but Annabelle25) immediately sat down on the Banzai table. I was curious and decided to play on (with just me and 2 Annabelles). At first I thought that there might be some collusion going on or that Annabelle25 might be chip dumping to Annabelle26 (Annabelle25 was playing a really wild loose strategy that made no sense). There were some similarities in the play of these two players too (both were quite sticky on flop and turn but overfolded river for example) and their timing was similar. However, later on Annabelle26 left and Annabelle25 remained on the table playing me heads up. Because of run good and the really loose play from Annabelle25, I was able to win around 25€ from Annabelle25 during heads up play. That eased my suspicions a bit, because I'm not sure why a colluder would stay to play a random person heads up with a strategy like that that bleeds money. Also why would colluders call themselves with almost exactly the same names? Anyway, it might still be worth for Unibet to check the accounts just in case.

@GR1ZZL3R Have you had enough time for sleep, excersize and social life? Maybe if you are tilting and running bad it's worth taking a break and only returning to the tables when you are feeling more sharp and poker is more enjoyable again? @MadAdo @pinki Regarding the BB/100 discussion it's also worth remembering that you need quite a big sample if you want accurate BB/100 figures. Without a big sample it's kinda useless to really focus too much on BB/100 because variance masks the real value. :D

A quick update: I went on my long overdue downswing last week :D. My bankroll was at almost 300€ but I lost about 8 buyins at NL 10 in maybe three hours (I was running bad but tilt and tiredness probably cost me an extra two buyins). Later on another day I played some PL 4. In that session runbad and some playbad set my bankroll at about 187€. Today I decided to play NL 4 and I was feeling better about my game thanks to better sleep and doing some excersize (excersize has a really big impact on how well my brain works, it manages to surprise me every time all over again). I started out running bad and was down about 5 or 6 buyins at first (some coolers: blind vs blind I had a set on a dry board where my opponent rivered a higher set with pocket 88, and later I lost a hand which was full house vs full house). But later thanks to some run good and the really soft player pool (ah, NL 4, home sweet home :D) I swung back and ended the session up about 14€. I remember one hand where the pot was 3 way and the flop came 4 6 8 with two diamonds. I had pocket 66 and I went all in on the flop with another somewhat tight player, who showed 88 for top set, so I thought that this hand would just be a continuation of my run bad. However I ended up making quads and won the pot. Todays session was about 3 hours (all my sessions have been me playing 4 tables as usual). I also played the double trouble freeroll today but busted that. So my bankroll is now at about 201€, which is fine. I will try and run it back up with NL 4 and PL 4 games and maybe some tournaments (because of all the missions involving tournaments). Regarding NL 10, I definately think I have an edge there when not too tilted or tired, however the edges are also much smaller than on NL 4 from my limited recent experience, because there are less ultrafish (but of course there are some) at NL 10 than NL 4. I have about 1700 bonus points and one 6€ cash ticket on my account as well. I'm not sure what I should use the bonus points for yet, I'm debating between heads up SnG (fun fast games with low rake) and cash tickets (I'm probably best at cash, but the tickets are restricted by stake and game type).

Probably the most interesting hand from today was this one: http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/9844069 My opponent in this hand was a pretty agressive player who was sitting on a big stack (that was closer to 30€ earlier in the session). At this point the opponent was 3betting almost every hand that he played against me preflop (and he played a lot of hands against me), and was 3betting pretty agressively against other players as well, but more against me than the other players. Villain probably thought that I was loose preflop (I was probably one of the looser players on the table). Preflop is pretty standard from me I think (against tight opponents I might fold though), this player had not folded against my 4bet yet the few times that I had tried it, so I didn't really see the point of 4betting now with this hand. Flop: Given how aggro the player was and how wide their range was (and they also seemed to have a very high flop cbet rate), I didn't see a reason to fold Turn: I call for the same reasons as flop and the fact that I pick up more showdown value. However I'm drawing dead against Kx and my opponent has not stopped betting yet which is maybe a bit worrying. I hadn't played many turns and rivers against this player so this hand was moving towards uncharted territory. River: My opponent decides to bet again. I didn't think that my opponent would bet the river with JJ and QQ (since I probably am expected to mostly call the river when I have a king myself), which made me happy to exclude those from my opponents range. I also blocked AK,KT,TT and flushes. Mostly because my opponent was pretty aggro and seemingly repping only Kx, I decided to call. Villain showed down 99, so I won the pot. I was a bit surprised by 99, I though 99 would usually check back the turn. Maybe villain could have QQ or JJ on the river after all. Or maybe villain decided that once I called the flop I should only ever have Kx, so since his hand is never good anyway he might as well turn it into a bluff. Hard to say. Unfortunately for my opponent he ended up punting his stack away during the rest of my session. He ended up playing a lot more aggro towards the end of the session (probably was quite tilted from losing some hands). On the last hand villain cold 4bets all in for 120 big blinds with 95 suited and gets called by JJ.

@GR1ZZL3R For me going to my local casinos are fun as a "social event" (though my winrates are probably positive there). The stakes are higher and action slower than online, but especially if you go with friends I think it can be quite fun. The stakes are currently a bit high though at my local casino for me to be a regular customer :P

@GR1ZZL3R I took your advice about taking shots . I four tabled NL 10 for two hours yesterday, and again two hours today. Yesterday I lost about 10€ and today I won about 50€, so the bankroll sits at 298,91€ currently. If I manage to reach something like 500 € then I might try PL 10 at that point as well, but I will keep playing NL 10 until then (and move down in stakes if my bankroll reaches under 200€).

@Petit_pertotal Good luck on the challenge! Looks like you are doing well. I can confirm what Wudu said, that the variance in HU SnGs can be pretty brutal. I played some last summer and ended up losing about 30 or 40 buyins in maybe 200 games (a mix of suboptimal play and running quite bad). Reading your opponent is very important in HU of course and knowing push fold ranges (or limp/push/fold ranges or limp/raise/fold ranges or whatever depending on the stack sizes) is probably quite important because the Unibet HU SnGs get shallow quite quickly.

@GR1ZZL3R Wow, congratulations! Have you participated in a live poker event like this before?

@GR1ZZL3R Thanks! Yeah, I think you are right. It's hard to fold a hand like that though :P. Sometimes I do bump into players who get frustrated when they they miss their draw and just decide to lead to see if you fold. And then sometimes you have clueless players that overvalue their hand and decide to lead the river. This player definately did not seem like either though :D @Rushbie Yeah good point, you are almost certainly right. In the past few weeks I have played a couple of poker sessions but been quite lazy to visit this forum (and a bit busy with university too). But what is new is that most of the sessions that I have played have been Pot limit Omaha. I got a bit bored with NLHE and was inspired by the Galfond challenge to play more PLO :D Basically I have had a couple sessions where I have been 4 tabling PL 4€ and listening to the Galfond challenge twitch stream in the background. I have played a bit of PLO in the past but not that much. But I know enough to know rough preflop ranges, some probabilities (e.g roughly how likely an opponent with a random hand is to have a flush and/or a full house on a paired river with 3 of one suit) and some basic game dynamics from watching some PLO gameplay on youtube (mostly from Phil Galfond). My bankroll is now at about 257€, which is about 60€ more than I had during the last update (mostly thanks to PLO). My impression about PL 4 compared to NL 4 on Unibet are: -It's seems to be a lot more profitable than NL 4 if you know what you are doing (but maybe variance is fooling me). Most players are either spewy fish, or tight regulars who almost never bluff (easy to fold to or bluff expolitatively). There are a few good regs every now and then of course, and I'm probably not that good yet myself. I'm still constantly learning this complicated game :P -There is a lot more variance of course. Today my stack on one of the tables reached 33€ and on another table it was 27€ before both tables closed down :P. -Blockers are more important when bluffing (because you have more cards which means more info on opponents cards), but there is more room to bluff exploitatively too in some situations. For example if a flopped A high flush would be the nuts and if the hand has been checked to the river, it seems like pots with certain opponents are going to be folded 80% to 90% when you bet the river (even 3 way sometimes). I would maybe post a hand here (I was lucky to win a 28€ pot today lol which is by far the biggest in terms of big blinds that I have ever played I think) but I haven't been able to get a hand replayer website to work for pot limit omaha when I copy and paste the hand description from Unibet into online hand replayers. Do you know anything that would work? I guess I could write some sort of Python script that would convert the Unibet hand history format into the format of another site (e.g pokerstars) so that some of these sites would be able to process the hand description. I'm also not sure when I should move up in stakes (maybe 300€ for NLHE but for PLO maybe something between a 400€ and 500€ bankroll). Unrelated to Unibet, I went to play live dealers choice (with 1€, 1€ blinds) to a Finnish casino with friends recently. Dealers choice is a game where the button chooses between the poker variants (all pot limit) of Texas holdem, Omaha, 5 card omaha and Sökö for that hand (in practice most players choose 5 card omaha). I won almost 200€, which was mostly thanks to rungood even though my opponents were also pretty bad. Other than poker, I have mostly been studying and another hobby of mine is hiking/enjoying nature (it's nice not to sit too much on the computer!). I'll sign off with a picture of a lake taken from a tree some days after new year (which is rotated the wrong way unfortunately).

So today was the first time since my last post that I had time to play poker (apart from a short SnG session with about 10 2€ SnGs with a net loss of about 3€ some time before Christmas). Today I ended up losing about 7€ playing 4 tables of NL4 cash games for a session of about 4 hours. I played badly at first by bluffing too much and lost some unlucky hands too, but later in the session I was able to win back some of my losses after I adjusted my play. I was more tired than I should be when playing poker and that probably affected my results :P. The most interesting hand in my opinion and one of the hands that I am most happy with from this session is the following hand (I was the player in the cutoff who had AA): http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/9824174 The villain UTG is a cash game regular (I remember seeing that profile playing poker quite many times in the past). They seemed to be pretty tight post flop and I don't have any memory of them actually ever bluffing.They seemed to be pretty tight preflop too despite the fact that in this hand villain is limping UTG. Preflop: I have AA and I can't think of any good reason not to raise, so I do raise. In hindsight my raise sizes against limpers are probably too small and I should change my overall strategy from raising 3x to raising 4x against an open limp (players who limp seem to almost always call that raise size so the raise is clearly not big enough if I want to extract max value). Flop: I have top set on a really dry flop, and I think it's pretty normal to check back and give villain a chance to bluff. A small bet with my whole range might be ok too because I probably have a range advantage on this flop, but with me holding AA specifically I think a check back can't be too bad. Turn: Villain checks again and I think checking or betting here are both probably good. I decide to bet because there are some draws now (like flush draws and maybe straight draws like J9s) and villain would probably call any pair here. In hindsight I probably should have gone bigger with my bet, something around 3/4 pot instead of 1/2 pot to give draws a worse price and extract more value from pairs. (Sidenote: The fact that villain didn't bet the turn with a flush draw reinforces the idea that they are tight in case I ever see the same player in the future). River: Villain leads into me on a card that completes flush draws. I though quite long about if I should call or raise. If I raised I think villain would call with AT, A6s, A8s, A3s, TT, 88, 66, T8s and a few Ax top pair hands sometimes (AJ,A9s and the combos of AQ that don't 3bet preflop). Bacause I have AA myself there are not actually that many combos of these hands. There are maybe only about 30 combos of these hands at most, even if villain limps all these hands preflop, leads all of them on the river and never bets or raises the turn with them (so in reality there are far fewer, most likely less than 10). I also think the river lead just looks a lot like a flush (it would be a weird play from two pair or a strange bluff from a seemingly tight player). So even if there are only a few combos of flushes in villains range it is probably too many for me to raise the river bacause villain can then reraise all in with flushes and I would get rekt. I called and villain left the table almost immediately after showdown lol, I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not. However the fact that I have the ace of hearts makes it more close, and maybe I am being results oriented. What do you think? After playing I realized that I had 37 Santas challenge bronze tokens to play (Santas challenge did not display earlier on the in browser version for some reason). I ended up winning 13 bronze freeroll tickets, 30 bonus points and 4€, so in the end I didn't lose much on the day (only a 3€ loss).

I agree that it's a bit annoying. It might have to do with the ban on opponent tracking software (which would be an understandable reason imo) but I'm not sure. It's possible to copy paste the text for individual hands using inspect element on the browser version at least. Edit: Sorting by pot size for example would be a nice feature tho.

Well done. Looks like a steady rise in the bankroll. Are you only growing the bankroll using bonus points? How do you manage to get so many bonus points?

Ebin :D. Well done with the progress so far! Watch out the variance in SnG can be pretty brutal. This summer I was playing mostly SnGs and at one point my bankroll was built to about 250€ and I was playing 10€ SnGs and won about 130€ in a day to make my bankroll 380€. However I lost most of it later playing more of those 10€ SnG (also partially because of bad play). If you think agressive bankroll management is a good choice for you then go for it. Here is a good variance calculator to make informed decisions on bankroll management https://www.primedope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/ So we can see that if you have an ROI (which is hard to estimate) of 10% in Unibets SnGs which is very good and you play 100 SnGs: -You will lose money overall 22% of the time -You will lose 3 and a half buyins or more 15% of the time -You will lose about 15 buyins or more 2.5% of the time And this is if you manage to not get tilted during a dowswing and lose more than you should. This changes a lot depending on ROI of course (and is much worse with lower ROI). Anyway, good luck at the tables :D!

Congrats on the kid! Btw I love hiking too but I have never tried geocatching and I really want to try it :D Regarding your questions on the Unibet client: 1 & 2: no 3: On the website client at least you can go to "account history" and you will see your buyins and payouts there. I think you have to calculate the total yourself though. 4: No. On the website client you can find the hands you played in the "history" section. It is not possible to dowload hand history (protection against tracking software probably). Copy pasting text for individual hands seems to have been disabled on the website too however you can copy paste the "inner html" using inspect element on the website for individual hands (same text with a few extra <span> tags). I have been using this to create hand replays on pokerhandreplays.com to share the most interesting hands. Just copy the inner html of the text section, remove the span tags, remove the summary section at the end (because it will confuse the hand replayer), click "import hand history" on the website and paste your text there. Like this you can create a replay of your interesting hand. So you playing a mix of all games. Just NLH or also PLO?

Thankyou @Rushbie ! Yeah good points regarding the hand! I am risking less there by raising less and I guess that is probably a good thing since villain mostly either has a high pocket pair or they don't so if they don't they are probably going to fold for even a small raise. Yeah I'm not sure if the minraises are good. I mostly do it because I think it is possible to play slightly more hands preflop with a minraise strategy and if bigblinds are likely to overfold anyway against any preflop raise size then it's a good price for me to steal the blinds. Also it's good if you are lazy because minraising only takes one click :P. On the other hand I guess I would build a bigger pot against my opponents if I raise bigger (which would probably be a good thing). I've also noticed that having a big stack on the table seems to alter how people play against you quite a bit sometimes. Some people see it as a challenge and become more agressive and also some players get more scared.

Today's session went well. I was running well and there were some quite bad players in the mix. For example one player kept bluffing all in post flop with pretty random hands and I was lucky enough to win maybe about 12€ from that player. After about 3 and a half hours I had a net profit of about 53€ in total. Here is the craziest play that I made during the session http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/9797107. Villain was playing back against me a lot. He (or she) had a very high 3bet rate against me preflop and he was raising a lot of flops too (and he calling most of my 3bets preflop too). I thought the flop would not hit villain very well unless villain had a pocket pair, which villain would have less of since villain was 3betting so much. Hence the pretty risky bluff sequence (I maybe should have 3bet all in instead of the sizing I chose because my sizing is a bit of a tell and if villain was dedicated enough with their bluff they could have now gone all in themselves, but whatever, it worked this time :P). Below is a pic from around the end of the session.

I figured people would get annoyed if I kept posting my poker results in "the poker chit chat" thread so why not make a dedicated thread for it instead! I'm a Finnish guy in my early 20s. Poker is a hobby for me, mostly a way to relax and lessen my stress in the evenings. I enjoy it as long as I feel like I am making good decisions and winning money. I've only been playing when I have felt sharp enough for it. I started around the end of November (maybe 30th or 31st) by depositing 60€. So far I have almost only played NL 4 cash games (playing 4 tables at once). I took a shot at NL10 when my bankroll was around 130€ but I lost about 25€ after maybe a four hour session. After today my bankroll is at 201.58€. In the past I have played on Unibet by starting from similar sums of money. This summer (2019) I got to 380€ with pretty agressive bankroll management playing SnGs mostly, but I blew most of the bankroll after that because of my reckless bankroll management and not playing so well. I think I will mostly be sharing what I have been up to in poker, my results, and maybe interesting hands every now and then. I don't really have any specific goals regarding poker or this blog, I will just keep playing and moving up in stakes when it feels appropriate, and posting on the blog when I feel like. I have not decided yet if I want to take shots at NL 10 again or if I still feel like growing my bankroll with NL 4 for a while, but I'm leaning towards still playing NL 4 for a bit. If I get sucessful enough to consider moving up to NL25 I might try learning some PLO instead because I've heard the NL 25 rake is quite high, but that is still in the distant future :P.

Lucky 2 hour NL 4 cash game session today with 37€ in profits! Nice to come back like that after losing almost 30 € on Saturday at NL10 and breaking even on Sunday at NL4

I was taking shots today at 10 NL. I ended down about 2 and a half buyins at the end of the four hour session (playing 4 tables) but I was down a lot more at one point (about 5-6 buyins). Anyway it was pretty fun, with a lot of action, and here is my favorite hand from the session (that I won of course, why else would it be my favorite :p): http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/9789039 Some context for the hand: Louise05 was a very loose agressive player. At any given point they were more likely to be bluffing than value betting when betting big imo. They had 4 bet jammed ATo twice against a 3 bet for over 100 BB preflop (once when I had AA and won). I had seen Louise double and tripple barrel bluff for big pots. In addition once I saw Louise05 trap a full house out of position for multiple streets against me (flop check call, turn and river check-check). Preflop: Because of the small 3 bet I thought Louise had a slightly stronger preflop range than normally, and a range that was pretty broadway card heavy. I think my call is pretty normal Flop: I have bottom pair on a slightly wet board. Given Louises perceived broadway heavyness and extreme looseness I'm happy to call. Turn: The 4 is pretty much a blank imo. Louise bets again. At this point I think Louise could have some hands like AT, KTs,TT, 99, 77 and overpairs for value. Louise could almost have any hand that they had preflop as a bluff here too some (a lot) of the time (AK,AQ,AJ,KQ,A8s,KJs,88 etc.). I decide to call the turn because of this, which is quite loose but might be ok in this situation. River: The river brings 4 to a straight. Louise pretty quickly bets most of their stack for about 3/4 of the pot. I go all in and Louise folds. Louises bet was pretty interesting because of the quick timing and the fact that a lot of hands won't be so happy to bet here (at least not so quickly). I thought it was pretty likely that Louise was bluffing because of everything discussed so far so I went all in. I was a bit worried that my bluff would have no fold equity and Louise would decide to call anyway with a bluff that happened to have a better hand strength (Like A9). Or that Louise had bet instantly with something like a set not thinking about the 4 to a straight and would just call their hand off. Luckily for me Louise folds and I win a big pot. Louise needs to fold 38% of the time for the bluff to brak even (based on redchips fold equity calculator with an estimated 0% equity when called) which sounds like enough for sure. I didn't have time to do such a deep analysis at the time of course because I was 4 tabling but these are the rough reasons for my play. It might be a really bad play but it was fun to make anyway :P