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2019 - Success or bust has never been more finely balanced


Brocky

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I'm usually round about most of the day but busyish during the afternoon with my masterplan for cash table domination. 

I watched a bit last night and saw you win a few nice flips and play some solid games, but then  jump into some low stakes Hexapro and a low tourney when your br started to lower a bit, getting pretty frisky with the all-ins. 🤣 This isn't part of the serious grinding as a pro I presume but just a little side trip to let off some of the pressure. :wonder:

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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@GR1ZZL3R wrote:

I'm usually round about most of the day but busyish during the afternoon with my masterplan for cash table domination. 

I watched a bit last night and saw you win a few nice flips and play some solid games, but then  jump into some low stakes Hexapro and a low tourney when your br started to lower a bit, getting pretty frisky with the all-ins. 🤣 This isn't part of the serious grinding as a pro I presume but just a little side trip to let off some of the pressure. :wonder:


The low stakes stuff is just for a laugh, it's better to relieve some stress in the 2 or 5 euro games as opposed to doing hundreds in the casino or on sports.  

Did a short stream earlier, I'm up about 340 at the 25s today over 57 games, so a decent session required tonight to hit target for volume.  Played 5 x 5eur Hexas and they were all 1.5x, then played 1 x 10eur one for a 10x and somehow managed to lose HU when villain was down to 3.5bb.  Too tilted to grind after that! 🤣

Used a 1 eur MTT ticket I had to win a 4 eur UK tour ticket so will hopefully win a package for what is effectively free.  

Oh and that 20 euro challenge bankroll is now at over 1k.  I've just withdrawn some though but the plan is to not need to deposit in 2019 at all, that'd be lovely.

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@Brocky

I think A7s in SB 20BB vs BB is a open raise. We often lead with this hand and don’t want to give the opponent possiblikity to realize equity with his hand in that spot. We are glad to pick up the dead money in the pot (ante and blinds). If he jams we fold. We can still have a raise/fold range in that spot.

9JJ - I like the line. Can see a check there as well, maybe a bit passive but don’t want to get the X/R ja on river. If we bet we need to call. If he bets out on river, for a small amount, I call. A lead on the river from the opponent with a larg size is not that often a bluff so if that happens it will be a fold if I don’t have any reads or seen the guy come to showdown before with some random sh#t he turns into a bluff.

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Day 2

I feel like I could write a dissertation on today's poker.  For those of you that have watched my stream you'll know I moan (a lot) but tonight might be the most brutal session I've had in the past 5 years.  Let's just put it this way (and I mean no disrespect to anyone on here), when I see people on here moaning about one 60/40 or 70/30 that they lose I honestly want to put them in my shoes from today.  

Things started off well, really well in fact, I was up around 18 buy ins within 80 or so games and then what happened after that was just the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.  I was 2-4 tabling for 5 hours straight, I think I missed almost every open-ended straight draw yet I managed to lose to the weirdest gutshots on no less than 4 occasions (for stacks).  Twice in 3 bet pots villain showed up with 54 on A2xx boards where they somehow get to the river (despite me betting both streets) before hitting the straight and stacking me.  I had AK into AA twice and QQ into AA once, without having a single premium vs premium cooler in my favour.  In a vacuum these are what they are but when you're almost 200 games into a day of poker and they're all happening together, it starts to become almost unbelievable.  

I'm not for one moment suggesting it's rigged or anything like that, these things happen.  I guess there's massive positives to take in that I didn't once move up stakes nor switch to the casino, both of which I have done more times than I can remember in the past.  Volume was great today, I played reasonably well given how tilted I should've been and I guess if I'm posting a winning day in circumstances such as these then when the variance switches my way I will be absolutely printing money.  

A big thank you to @AndreiBN for being my first Twitch subscriber.  I must admit I probably wasn't much fun on stream tonight for obvious reasons but I'll be back tomorrow no doubt.

I guess if there were a microcosm of today it would've been the €25 MTT I played where I have 54 on a JT367 only to run into 98.  

In all seriousness I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.  The mental toll that days like this take are unreal.  At points I was sat here wondering if I should've even quit my job, could I even beat the games anymore etc.  If the games weren't drying up because of the time I likely would've been sat here grinding until I fell asleep.  The games were ridiculously soft in patches and that's what makes it so hard to stomach.  When you have a guy who bets the river and snap calls your jam with Q high you would rematch them until you physically could no longer stay awake, yet somehow I was getting coolered against these players time and time again.  50% of me wants to sleep for 5 hours and get back on it like there's no tomorrow, the other half thinks uninstalling the client would be a good idea. 

I know I'm rambling but I'm still trying to fathom exactly what went on tonight.  Hopefully I'll be fresh enough to grind tomorrow.

Results

198 games at 25s, 105 wins, €142.50 profit, 2.9% ROI

Total - Day 2 

Current total/Needed to hit goal

301/200 games

+€477/€400 profit

6.3%/8% ROI

Well ahead on volume, decent profit, ROI has slipped.

Today:

02-01-19.PNG.cdab7b5ac4dffbbdec260554b76a753a.PNG

Year to date:

Latest.PNG.3a7b05c4a68d129e29b987cc0d567ea6.PNG

 edit: I'll reply to the above posters in the morning.

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I watched about half an hour of your stream last night and commented on the fact you were human, moaning like the rest of us when stupid bad beats start the slippery slide downwards. You predicted the 89 perfectly to get ko'd in that spot and it's at times like that, when I know what's coming to do me in , that I usually close down for the time being. All you can do is stay positive, which you still are, you didn't lose your roll, you didn't blow up in the casino, you didn't monkey tilt it off at higher levels. I made the comment, you're a pro, get on with it, you're in the game and making money, you've dealt with the bad times, the good times are coming. Surviving a day like that has got to be a plus, if not in cash then in other aspects, 

monty python GIF

 

 Today's your day. :Thumbsup:

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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yup, pretty much what @GR1ZZL3R said. You are a long term winner, you probably have a good idea of your true ROI now, so short term results really shouldn't matter. Obviously, even as a professional this is easier said than done at times. You obviously know all this already anyway, just keep smashing the games in mate.

Maybe even don't check results until the end of the week or something, although that doesn't really help in terms of building a stream and blog following.

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@successlaw Thanks for regularly tuning in, appreciate that buddy.

@TDW I remember that well! They were loving the QJ last night 🤣

@Silver1 The A7 is an interesting one because I think it's difficult to actually play it too badly preflop.  Open jamming with blinds/antes is going to be +ev, raise/calling seems ok to me, limp/calling seems fine but also raise/folding doesn't seem horrible as well.  The reasons I would opt for calling over raising are 1) If we're going to fold to the jam, we save 1-1.5bb by not raising and 2) By having stronger hands in our calling range it allows us to call wider without fear of being attacked so often

The JJ9 was a strange one.  I think there's merit for betting the turn as villain can have a lot of straight draws/gutshots/flush draw and we want to charge those but I'm not thrilled about getting it in if he jams the turn.  My plan was to check back because I think he had about 1.4x pot left on the river meaning if he had a jack he may just go half pot and it doesn't cost me my whole tournament life.  I think having position also allows me to get value on the river when he checks.  If he had open jammed river it definitely would've been a tricky decision.

@GR1ZZL3R Appreciate the kind words mate.  I did contemplate closing down for the day on more than one occasion but I was also concious of the fact that if I have an edge grinding can only be a good thing long term.  I think it's easy to get into a mindset of not playing or not putting in the volume which I've probably done in the past.  Like you say though, no crazy blow ups at high stakes or casino games so today's an opportunity to take on the world again.

@UAC For sure mate, the financial loss of the downswing last night isn't an issue really, I think it was more how it was happening and how relentless it was.  Fresh mind today though and we go again!

<3

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@Brocky The do we press on or call it quits keeps coming up for me in the cash challenge. I've made my target already for today, but how much do I want to press on to get breathing space for the inevitable bad day? 50% of my mind says press on while running OK but the other half says protect what you've got. If I play on and lose what I've made so far, how bad would I feel knowing that I could have stopped while ahead. Is it worth it for the chance to soar ahead? I'm struggling with this one! :wonder:

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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On occasion I've been known to be on both sides of the coin. One side where I lose a few games so just quit and the other side where I win a few and quit to protect the profit. It's important to just look at life as one long session and not worry about whether the profit comes today, tomorrow or yesterday. Wise words and not mine unfortunately, it's definitely something I struggle with.
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I'm like that as well normally, and play or quit as the mood dictates, but having a set target- if not that day certainly before too long-definitely alters the outlook. For the Advent challenge building the highest stack was fun, if I got up to 400bb and lost a decent size hand I just carried on trying to rebuild, but my daily challenge seems to have that extra dynamic. You know (hopefully ) that your stack will grow, if not today then tomorrow or the day after, but my stack has to grow quickly or I'm done for. It's making me think more in tricky spots, probably a good thing and I'm certainly playing a bit tighter but not scared money yet. Keep yours growing, onwards and upwards. 👍

"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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@Brocky Interesting thoughts! The A7s I think we can raise and expect that BB will fold out a larger portion of his range if we do 2.8-3xBB. I don’t think that the majority of the players defend the BB in this situation wide enough to theory and therefor we can exploit this. But we do take a larger risk to reward and we can also take in discussion how well A7s will do on a flop but I think I will go for a raise here the majority of the time but might mix in a limp here and there dependent on the opponents stack size.

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I think 3x/folding A7s at 20bb bvb is pretty bad. Maybe at the micros it'll be fine as people will generally be more passive in the blinds but at the higher stakes where there are more regs who will be attacking wider we want to give them that opportunity with their whole range and that's why I think just calling is probably best. The other issue is if they call we're in a 7-8bb pot out of position with a hand which flops really badly. If we hit the ace we're going to get credit for it almost every time and we rarely have top pair with the 7.
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Interesting @Brocky.

I am not totally against the limp and maybe that is the standard play here, I’m not so updated in the MTT starts these days. 

What do you think about balancing the range there with the lumps? Do we ever appear with AA/KK/QQ/AK/JJ/AQ at the flop after a limp in that spot or do we just give an f in balance and play exploitative with limps (I.e mid strength hands and low strength hands that are two week to play OOP) at the given stack sizes?

Like the discussion and exchange of thoughts mate!

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@successlaw Yes mate but not until after the Man City/Liverpool match, so about 10pm GMT.  Hope that's not too late.

@Silver1 In a 1 euro game I'm almost never balancing my range but in say a 100eur MTT I think it's important to limp AA with X% frequency and raise it with Y% frequency.  In HU I will probably raise AA 80% of the time, limp 20% vs a reg but raise 100% vs a rec without reads that they're going to isolate wide.  Against a rec that we're likely never to see again I think you want to take the most profitable line in that moment but against regs it's important to protect yourself from being exploited by having some slight balance, especially when OOP.

I'm not an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination so take what I say with a pinch of salt!

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