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GamesDean

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  1. Well, I’m surprised. Would expect to lose that hand most of the time. But villain’s play isn’t that crazy if you think about it. Yes, you raised him at the river. BUT, your raise was small, indicating your hand was strong enough to raise – but not nuts strong. Which was exactly the case. When picking hands to bluff, he doesn’t really need much; blockers are not that relevant. But if you want to block something, blocking a middle flush card makes sense. It reduces your amount of too-strong-to-fold flush combinations and makes it more likely you have a weak flush. Obviously, it’s still ambitious to bluff here, but I think it’s a really cool play by villain. If he’s playing decent overall, I would avoid playing him. 😃
  2. First of all: Sounds like a good plan. Good luck! To answer your questions: I don’t have a blog. Never occurred to me to have one. Regarding my background: I’m 28 years old and I’m playing online poker since the age of 18. Deposited once, never looked back. Didn’t really ever make a living from playing poker, though. Whenever I won more than €1k and I wanted to buy whatever, I would make a withdrawal. Don’t want to do that anymore. So I’m in an interesting spot right now, actually. Currently playing NL50, close to playing NL100 (40 buy-ins rule). I don’t know how good I really am but I’m definitely somewhat knowledgeable. Never used tracking software, never really studied using solvers or anything. Learned from playing poker, watching other players play on YouTube / Twitch, discussing hands like we did here etc. I’m not trying to emulate GTO. It’s way more fun to tackle players psychologically and force them to do what I want them to do at the tables. Still, against strong regs I’m obviously applying some kind of GTO (e.g. bluffing when it makes sense and I have decent blockers). By the way: Especially liked your bullet point regarding quality of experience. A couple of days ago I was almost at NL100 but had some unlucky spots. Impatiently, I tried and tried again and experienced a bad run. In the heat of the moment, I was convinced I was just unlucky. But, as it turns out, there was some entitlement tilt, for sure. It all went so well – I had an enjoyable upswing – that I didn’t want to wait. So I played although I didn’t feel like it. Took a couple days off, and it’s better now. Have to rebuild some of the damage I have done to my bankroll, though.
  3. Well, 25 buy-in BRM still is somewhat aggressive. More so, when you feel attached to your results. The lower your winrate, the more downswings you will experience – therefore, the more buy-ins you need to even out said downswings. It’s not surprising that you went broke playing with 6 buy-ins. Swings for 10+ buy-ins are a given if you play long enough, no matter how good you are. Personally, I start taking shots at a new limit with 40 buy-ins. I used to play more aggressive (similar to your approach) but it didn’t suit me. While not playing overly scared, there still were some scared money effects in play. Ultimately, it’s your decision and your money. Do what’s right for you. Good luck!
  4. Hand 1: Well played. Flop sizing is fine but personally, I would either bet smaller (33 %) or bigger (75+ %). By sizing small, you allow your oppponent to a) float more hands and b) make him raise with worse draws that you are miles ahead of. If you bet small and get raised, you could play your draw more aggressively by 3-betting flop, or you could just call, knowing that your K high is good a decent amount of the time (while having the benefit of half the deck improving your hand). By betting big, you build a pot more effectively. Additionally, you make it harder for your opponent to float your c-bet. That makes a lot of sense if your opponent is very tough to play (floats a lot in position / forces you in tough spots by constantly raising and betting big with air as well as good hands). Hand 2: Well played. Flop shove is really player dependent. Against some, it’s awful. Against others, it’s very reasonable and effective. Although, you don’t shove because it’s tough to play future streets (which is true). You shove to protect your equity against hands that almost flip against your AK, e.g. KQ of clubs, KT of clubs, T9 of clubs. Even a hand as weak as T9 of diamonds has 23+ % equity on the flop. By shoving you take all that equity away. Of course, a hand like T9 of clubs could call the shove but if they ever fold a flush draw here, that’s a big win for you.
  5. You shouldn’t whine about luck. You can’t change if you get lucky/unlucky in a hand. You can change how to react to your luck, though. You seem to go through a rough patch right now. That happens. You seem to be a capable player. So: Take the beats and just – keep – going. Also, I’m sure you know this but: J9o has almost 14 % equity going to the river. Yes, it’s beyond ridiculous to see J9o here. But it has a reasonable amount of outs. It’s almost as likely as a dice roll that has to hit a 6 (assuming it’s a seven-sided dice).
  6. How I would play QQ in that spot: Raise preflop to 0,40€ and go from there. I rather play QQ heads-up than multiway. Your video shows why flatting is a bad idea. Although the flop is decent (no ace, no king, no 789 board etc.), you’re still lost. The big blind could easily overcall any 2x. Yes, he could raise a hand like JsTs / JcTc on the turn. Yes, he could overvalue a hand like TT or JJ that he slowplayed preflop. Since we don’t have any reads, this happens to be a difficult spot. I would probably fold this combo of QQ as we have the Q of spades – therefore we block drawing hands like AxQs, KxQs, QsJx etc. It’s just an estimate, though, maybe we always have to call/shove QQ here. As played: Raise the flop. Small. Always. This way you get value from 9x, smaller pocket pairs, draws etc. Additionally, you get more information about your opponent’s range. If you get raised on the flop, you can more easily fold without being wrong as often.
  7. Very well said. Mental game is one of the most difficult aspects for me. I was on such a downsing, losing every flip and pretty much running into incredible setups that I withdrew most of my BR. I think the downsing is ending and I'm trying to work on my mental game to avoid doing this. Anyways, this blog is an inspiration, keep up the great work! Imo, the mental game is the most overlooked part of poker strategy. It’s absurdly easy to tilt – and it will affect your winrate massively. Nowadays, my mental game is stronger but I’m still struggling with entitlement tilt when running bad. What helped me tremendously: Focussing on decision making. If I’m happy with my decision (while understanding that I can still lose the hand) I’m tilting way less. If I’m then running into villain’s top range (when I beat 90 % of his calling range), I’m like: Yeah, that sucks, but that’s part of his range. You just have to accept that even the biggest whale rarely gets it in drawing dead – even if you are 90 % to win the pot, you WILL lose every tenth time.
  8. Just keep going. Variance can be devastating. Started playing NL25 at the start of a month, took a shot at NL50 – had to back down – grinded NL25 again for a while – took another shot. Last week I continuously ran into villain’s top ranges with the 2nd nuts (on draw heavy boards, obviously). Then, yesterday, out of nowhere I got dealt multiple setups – still ran into better hands sometimes but managed to suck out in huge spots. You just have to keep going. If you are a winning player you will get out of that downswing. Eventually. Good luck at the tables (not against me, though)!
  9. You might think it’s not selective memory but it kind of is. Even when it’s not. Let me explain: You can only check back on hands where you’ve seen your oppent’s hole cards. But what about all the hands that didn’t go to showdown? You might have been hitting cards left and right yourself – maybe your opponents folded their strong hands (that were way ahead) every time they were falling behind. There’s so much information we don’t have when it comes down to luck. I’m not doubting you had a bad run. Obviously, you were unlucky. But there’s a lot more to being lucky/unlucky than meets the eye. It’s often hard to see. What I’m trying to say: You can’t control your luck. You can only control how you react to it. It could even be detrimental to run too good (if you understand what I mean by that). It’s hard to stay in control when you feel like your opponents have superhuman hitting skills. Your mind is busy with cursing at them/not believing how they can be so lucky/thinking about the last time you hit one of your draws etc. Whenever you experience that state of mind you should immediately quit your session. If you’re mentally skilled enough you could –alternatively – allow yourself to be angry for like five seconds; after that you put your negative emotions into the back-end of your brain and focus on your table again (that’s something Daniel Negreanu did/does in tournaments).
  10. @GR1ZZL3R exactly. even with such information about the opponentwith A9off in cashgame call it is ... no words. Of course you can risk it, but if someone blames the software after that? Meh – it depends. If someone’s shoving any two cards (I have seen that before), calling off A9o seems fine. You have 60,77%. For comparison: AJo (a much better looking hand) isn’t much stronger – it has 63,56%. So, it’s definitely +EV to call. It’s laughable to accept a coinflip-like situation and complain when you lose, though. If you go for marginal spots (which is completely fine, 60,77% is a strong enough advantage), you have to be okay with losing. Often. Because you will lose. Often. 4 out of 10 times. These 4 out of 10 times include rivered sets, btw. I’m always surprised by the amount of people who complain about running bad – but when asked to show hands they might show one 2-outer and a bunch of 80:20 or 70:30 spots they lost. That’s not unlucky – that’s going to happen a lot. Everybody runs bad in these. Because running bad is running naturally. You will experience swings. If not, you’re not playing enough.
  11. If I get the hand history right, I can’t follow your logic. How is limp/shoving SB vs. BB with KJo bad, but with all Ax, it’s fine!? That doesn’t make any sense. KJo is close to a monster SB vs. BB. Limp/shoving is a way to maximize the amount of chips you can collect – since it’s a battle of the blinds, ranges are usually wide (as long as you don’t play against nits or the stacks don’t allow plays like that). So, yeah, I just don’t understand your problem with your opponent’s line. And even if your opponent played bad: You can’t change how your opponents play; you can only change how you react to it. Do you really want to get mad every time you don’t agree with your opponent’s logic? That sounds maddening!
  12. This didn’t happen to anyone ever.
  13. Take two days off and do something you enjoy. Then come back and get your points. Better to take a break now than grinding while tilting and waste money in the process.
  14. If anything, the raise is too small – I prefer 7k or even bigger. The reason is, even fun players understand bubble play to some extent, so they understand, you will raise lots of junk hands, so they are incentivized to limp/call more often. Making the raise too small makes it too easy for your opponent to limp/call, so making it bigger is necessary to get the folds you want. If SB is shorter, shoving all-in gets better but as things stand, I think @solidplanbro played the hand just fine. Obviously, he can’t call the flop shove if he doesn’t flop anything but that doesn’t make the SB all-in reasonable. It’s terrible and way too risky, especially just before the money.
  15. Reading this blog for a couple of days now. Imho, you have all the skill you need, you are a great player but you seem to struggle with entitlement tilt. You know that you are way better than your competition, so you think you should win a vast majority of the time. But that’s not how poker works. A lot of the hands you lost were preflop all-in – even if your opponents plays any two cards he will have 30-40% equity a lot of the time. You can lose against that kind of equity multiple times in a row, quite easily even. But understandably, it feels frustratingly unfair because it seems the opponent doesn’t do anything in order to win. It seems that he hates money, that he’s stupid, that he wants to lose all his money to you – but, of course, time and time again he’s saved by the dealer. If that’s how you feel about it, I can’t offer you help because that’s my biggest leak, too. I’m often getting angry – and as a result, probably playing worse – when I think that I’m far better than my opponent but just can’t win ever vs. them. It’s hard to deal with. I don’t have any anger issues in any other area of life but stupidity gets to me for some reason. That line of thinking is stupid, of course. You want opponents like that at the table. And it doesn’t matter if they’re stupid. Maybe they are, maybe they are really intelligent in other areas and just want to have some fun playing online poker. For you, losing 15 buy-ins is a big deal, for him, it might be pocket change. You don’t know, you shouldn’t care. But obviously, we can’t help ourselves.
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