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RIP to Day 1a. Call in the BB with AT against one raiser, flop comes T7X, villian bets and I call (Probably should have just shoved here as I only had 20bb or so to start the hand)

Turn is something under a Ten, check check

River is an 8. Villian bets and I call and he shows the rivered straight.

Next hand I'm in the sb with 9bb or so and have A4o. CO raises and I jam. He calls and shows 8's. Flop is 822. That'll be GG then.

I'd love to say I played good or bad but to be honest I just didn't play. I reached showdown twice I think and that was the hands above. Highest pair all night was tens and that got a 3 bet and 4 bet. Other than that I had AQo once in level one. We shall return tomorrow for another bite at the cherry.

Now to sleep!

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Day 1b update 1

The plan was to get a good nights sleep and be ready for day 1b fresh and positive. Unfortunately that did not happen. Turns out you should really ready the notifications on the walls of your hotel.

IMG_20170603_111045.thumb.jpg.408c395a5ce8e0e2e6a6ffca4522314d.jpg

Now I just ignored the advice and set it what I thought was 'cold' as it was a warm day in Glasgow and left to go play Day 1a. When I got back in at 00:30 or so I basically walked into a tropical jungle. Unfortunately hotels also have a pretty understandable policy so that you can only open windows about 2 inches so I spent the next 3 hours at least tossing and turning on my cotton rock of a pillow trying to erase the foldathon I'd just been through and get some decent sleep. I think I got about 3 or 4 hours and then at 8ish was awake again :(

Watched some Youtube videos, including this hilarious nonsense..

 

.. and then went to breakfast.

Spilt large amounts of my cereal on my phone as I seem to have forgotten how to eat with a spoon. I then went for a quick walk along the Quayside to look for a cash machine so I got get my buy-in for the day. Half way around the complex I realise that my when putting my t-shirt on in the morning I managed to get most of my deodorant on the outside of my t-shirt and headed back to the hotel to change. Turns out the building next to the hotel has an cash machine and if I had just turned right instead of left I would have seen it and saved myself a pointless walk.

I am not GTO on this trip so far.

I took a few things away from playing yesterday. I was sitting at a table that was full of casino regulars. I think there was myself and Ben aka Estonian Jesus that were the only non-regs for the majority of the time I spent at the table. Everyone else seemed to know the dealers, the floor staff and each other. At one point I had raised and I looked up to see one of the players who had already folded look at another player, look at my cards and then nod. Funnily enough I won that hand uncontested. Now I've not played nearly enough live to know whether or not they were mouthing a conversation to each other previous to me looking up and it was just coincidence or if one player was trying to tell the other that they thought I had a big hand (I had 7's I think) but it certainly highlighted the fact that these guys all knew each others and their plays pretty well. It didn't change my play or anything but it has definitely made me realise that I need to pay much more attention to whats happening on the table when I'm in and out of the hands.

My plan today is not to look at my phone at all during play. It's so easy to throw your cards in the muck and then reach for you phone and see whats going on social media but I think I'm missing out on tells and play styles. I feel a lot more awake, even with the lack of sleep, so I'm going to try and pay much more attention.

My other plan is to not be card dead and if I am.. mix it up anyway. The play at my table yesterday was loose to say the least. People were not reaching showdown with AK or big pairs most of the time and there were some interesting plays. The guy to my left yesterday must have had a VPIP 50% minimum but his aggression worked. The early levels seem like a good time to get some chips together in live play so I'm not going to be quite so tight this time round. Hopefully it works out for the best.

I forgot to mention the biggest cooler of the table last night. Two players ended up going AIPF AA vs QQ. The player with QQ called after Estonian Jesus tanked for quite some time and then folded. When they turned over the cards Ben said to the QQ player that he had folded the same hand. The QQ player was pretty upset about being told he was drawing basically dead and got ready to pass a large amount of his chips to someone else. Flop (roughly) comes out T9X, J turn, 8 river. :Wow: They worked it out after that the guy was 2% or something preflop to win the hand. Nice to know someone was running pure.

There is just over an hour to go now before day 1b kicks off. Davitche is confirmed to be playing today but I'm unsure who else is going to play. I think Daiva and Hensiepensie busted yesterday, Startlinggrope aka ChapAndAChair busted but appears to be regging today and there are a few other guys that will be in the mix too. Not sure how Lappin and Iany finished last night but Espen/Uhlen is through with a small stack. If I can get hold of/meet people I'll try and update their stacks too. I'm terrible at saying hello to new people so I've not actually spoken to many of the faces I 'internet' know. Going to go down now and see who I can awkwardly introduce myself to as MoreTBC :Rofl:

First break update (chips permitting) at 3pm or so :)

 

 

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Down to 17k at the second break. Lost AK vs 99 on the last hand of level all in pre. 

Everyone else appears to be in. Hensie confirmed in Day 2 with big stack. Ian is short. 

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Quick late night update

I busted with about 5 minutes to go until level 12. Couldn't get above 30 bb for the last two hours or so and just blinded out. Eventually went all in with A9 for about 7bb and was called by AJ. 

Uhlen/Espen, David Lappin and Iany have all made it to day 2 and Hensiepensie is 2nd in chips going into day two.

Davitsche and Daiva busted along with NMPfan, MathrimC, Jonny, StartlingGrope/ChapAndAChair and Pirahn. NMP picked up Davids bounty.

Had a lovely meal with Pirahn putting the world to rights and then a drink or two with Startling and his wife.

Community event is at 5pm tomorrow and sounds like it's going to be a fun one.

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Day 3 (Sunday) and wrap up

I had a decent nights sleep! By decent I mean 6 hours or so but I felt like a new man when I woke up. Had a nice breakfast and a chat with @Mynona who I bumped into and then it was off into town.

I'm not the smallest of creatures so I've been trying to be a bit more active on a regular basis and one of the things I have been doing is walking. Normally I have someone with me to talk to but on this occasion I was riding solo. I had forgotten to take any earphones with me so decided a quick trip into the centre of Glasgow for a cheap pair would be an excellent time waster before the community event. It was another freakishly warm and sunny (although a little windy) day in Glasgow so I headed to the hotel car park to get my sun glasses from the car. To my horror, the car was nowhere to be seen :wow:.

"Has it been towed?"

"I thought this car park was free?"

Panic set is as I pictured a day of visiting some impound and paying an astronomical fee to get my car back. Figuring there would be some sort of car park attendant or office on the ground floor I made my through the floors. By 'through the floors' I really mean from level 2 to level 1 where I found my car sitting exactly where I'd parked it 🤣. I could have sworn I'd parked it on level 2 on Friday, honest!

With sunglasses in hand I started my adventure into town. I didn't know where I was going but Google maps did so I did what the lady told me and ended up at a street that had shops on it. HMV had a lovely sale on headphones so for £5.99 I was now able to block out the world and wander aimlessly around Glasgow listening to podcasts.

If you've never listened to a poker podcast before I strongly urge you to. Obviously you should be listening to the Unibet sponsored Chip Race hosted by the lovely David Lappin and the difficult to spell Dara O... *googles* 'Kearney but there are some other gems available. I like to put them on now when I'm driving for any length of time or when I'm walking as I find I pay a lot more attention to the content. I wanted to highlight two in particular that I listened to, one on the way down the Glasgow and one while I was walking on the Sunday and then on the drive home because it's so long.

I've been a fan of Joey Ingram's podcast for a while now as he always seems to get interesting people on and they're always very entertaining to listen to or watch. What struck me about these two podcasts in particular is the way these high stakes guys think about the all the things outside the actual on the felt actions and the lengths they go to to try and find edges on other players in the same pool. It's fascinating to hear about how they see their lives and the world in general from a slightly different light from the norm. I can't really do it justice in explaing it so I can only reiterate my suggestion to listen/watch them and see if you can take anything away from either persons views and opinions. 

I spent well over an hour just walking up and down the Clyde river absorbing the podcast and some sun and then headed back to the hotel to get some food. On the walk back I ended up behind Espen, Estonian Jesus aka Ben and Robin from Unibet. They were making their way to the Casino so Espen and Ben could play day 2 so I left them to it and just sent Espen a stalker-like photo on twitter so he knew I was watching him 🤣. He asked me later why I didn't come up and say 'Hi' and I told him that I was big timing him :Cool:

When I first saw Espen aka @Hymn2Ninkasi it was during Day 1a and he was waving at me from another table while we were playing. I didn't know he was waving at me as I thought he was looking Ian Simpson, who was sitting a few tables over so I ignored it. After I folded my next hand I looked up and he's waving again. I look over at Ian who has his head down and assume he's just not seen Espen and ignore him again. By about the 4th time of this happening I ended up being shouted at and had to quickly apologise for misreading his attempts at communication. This then started a theme for the weekend whereby I would just tell Espen I was 'big timing' him in any situation possible until he wears the poo emoji hat he won from me in London on stream. We're not friends until he does it 🤣

I went to the Casino at 3pm expecting it to be full of day 2 railers and general buzz but was met with a quiet and subdued room of mostly men and no community members in sight. Luckily @MathrimC appeared a few minutes after I got my first drink and explained I just missed everyone and they'd gone for a late lunch. I did get to have my first proper conversation with Daiva aka @balticblonde which was a little awkward as she knew my girlfriend better than me 🤣. They had met at the players party in London and spend a good chunk of the night tearing up the dancefloor together while I sat in the corner drinking and moaning about the music. We discussed bad beats from the weekend and shared a common bond of being eliminated in the last levels of day 1b :Teardrop:. @jonny2192 and Mynona were next to appear and made ourselves comfy at one of the bar tables while Daiva darted off to try and catch the other ambassadors and the end of the lunchtime prices at the Chinese buffet next door.

We finally sat down for the community event just after 5pm. 3 tables of players hungry for bounties, tickets and glory. My table was an international affair that included the 2016 Glasgow champ to my left, @Robin-Unibet and at least one other player who I know is on the community but don't want to risk mistagging. If you read this and you were on my table let me know so I can put a face to the username please :) I was not aware at the time that Robin did not know who I was/knew my username so in hindsight giving him grief about never receiving any poker related emails from Unibet may have seemd a little assholy, sorry about that :). Understandable he attacked my blinds whenever he could and quickly became the table boss. The tables were self dealt so we had a lot of fun getting confused about chopping up 3 way all ins and at one point we all just lost the ability to read the board and had a 5 minute debate about whether there was black card in the middle of the table during a previous hand. With the blinds going up every 10 minutes or so we were lucky if we got an orbit in per level but nobody really cared. As the field decreased and the tables broke we ended up being table 1 and eventually the final table. Now I'd had a few pints at this point so I apologise if any of the reporting is incorrect but I -think- this was the final table :-

Seat 1 - Pirahn

Seat 2 - Me

Seat 3 - Billy aka UK Tour 2016 champ aka sG (I think)

Seat 4 - Unibet Robin

Seat 5 - Mynona

Seat 6 - @ChapInAChair

Seat 7 - Someone with far too many chips. Part of me wants to say Jason, part of me wants to say it was a Simon. Part of me wants to say he's from Unibet, part of me things he was with the production guys covering the event. He was one of the few people I never spoke to directly so I apologise if none of the above is correct :)

Seat 8 - Daiva 

Seat 9 - ??

When they balanced the tables we might have been at 8 anyway or I've forgotten someone. The reason I didn't pay attention was because I lasted one hand. Blind vs blind I had KQs and went all in for less than 10bb and was called by Aces. I got up, waited for my free drink that Robin bought and then left for a sulk 🤣.

The rest of the night was spent spent railing, eating and drinking. The final table for the main event was right next to the community event so it was very easy to bounce back and forth between the two tables and have a nosey. There was also some fierce pool rivalries going on and everyone was having a great time. I managed to smooth things over with Robin at the bar and explained I was that guy that complains all the time so we're all good I think. Everyone from the community stayed all night, along with all the ambassadors, and drank the night away. It's a testament to the community, via here on the forum and on Twitch, that people from all nations and walks of life that have just met for the first time in real life can spend several hours together partying like they're best friends. I would have happily played community SnGs for 3 days instead of the main event and really didn't want the night to end. 

The closest thing to a 2nd community event ended up being a PLO flip tournament that took a very long time to organise and caused more action than the final table in the main event! It took a while to get going because we ended up discussing staking with Mr Lappin, Marc Convey and @DaVitsche for about half an hour and then there wasa big debate to decide on a buy in after Lappin pulled out an envelope of £20 notes like the high roller he is. (It was rent from his flatmate Christin Maschmann (@DavinaDarr) that she had won by final tabling the main event)

Competitors for the 2 PLO flip tournies ended up being Myself, David Lappin, Marc Convey, David Vanderheyden, a team consisting of Jonny and Mathrim (Team fivers) and Hensiepensie. It was first to win 3 flips in the first game and 2 in the second because the first one took so long. Half way through we got told to keep it down because the main event was heads up and we were being rather rowdy 🤣. I think Hensie or Davitsche won the first and Team fivers took the second. Moments after the end of the second tourney the main event champion was crowned :Cash:.

I spent nearly the entire day of 1b sitting with the champ, Andrew, on my right or left. He was a lovely guy from Edinburgh, played very solidly as far as I could tell and would happily discuss a hand you'd played with him and show you cards. I was rooting for him when they got down to the last few players so a big congratulations to him on a well deserved win.

After the excitement of the end of the main event everyone said their slow goodbyes and made their way to their respective hotels. It was a day I'd happily repeat over and over.

 

That's now a UO and a UK tour event in the bag and I'm proud to say I've attended both and would do the same again in a heartbeat. It was great to finally meet my internet boss @IanSimpson and steal his shoes, meet lots of new community members and catch up with ones I'd met in London already. I learned so much this weekend about both poker and no poker things and had some amazing conversations with people I barely knew about subjects I never expected to be talking about. I might not have won any money (well I won a pound by staking Lappin in a game of pool) but I did get to convert some internet friends into real ones, got some more valuable live poker experience and possibly blagged a trip to Bucharest as a blogger for the UO (I won't hold you to that Simon ;))

More blog status will resume now. Month wrap up next and then we'll see what June brings :).   

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@MoreTBC You nearly got a lot more than expected from @IanSimpson I dont think I want to repeat it here but I dont think you will steal Ians shoes again.

I think Ian should be a UK ambassador he would solve a lot of problems with his unique tactic(you did give them shoes back very quickly on that threat of his :P )

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@psrquack wrote:

@jonny2192 wrote:

 I dont think you will steal Ians shoes again.

 


Hmm, it seems we have a new interpretation of the don't judge me until you have walked in my shoes phrase. Btw Hello Jonny. A short trip or a long stay here?🆒


@psrquack Just a flying visit. Had a good time in Glasgow so will prob play for a package at some stage. If I can convince @FeelsBadMan to play pool for UK tour seats I may play them all. 😏

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** END OF MONTH REVIEW (MAY 2017) **

  • +/- for the month: -€244.58 (BR Total: €4.50)
  • Days played: 26
  • Losing days: 19
  • Winning/Break Even days: 7
  • Sessions/Games played - Cash: 12, SNGs: 15, MTTs: 221
  • ROIs - Cash: -28.16% , SNGs: 26.92% , MTTs: -23.67% 

** FULL RESULTS **

Well May was brutal :( Not much more to say after the last results post really, continued to have losing days and ended up with a bankroll good enough for a pint. All is not lost though, I had enough points for 10x €4 MTT tickets so that will be a good starting point in June to try and build the roll again. Also SNG ROI continues to be good even with the small sample so I may play a few more of them.

 

Goals for June

  • Get out the hole and start playing with profit again.
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.

 

Back to basics for June it seems. There is no point getting involved in the sat systems with such a small roll so it's just going to be €4 and under MTTs for the foreseeable future. Probably going to end up missing the Half Billion too although I may just make a deposit and fire that as a one off because it's going to be such good value.

Hand discussion has been completely neglected recently and that's 100% down to my laziness and general not paying attention when I play. With all the will in the world I plan to post a hand a week to see what people think about them. I actually had my first live hand review in Glasgow about a hand played out in the community event, it went something like this...

We're down to 6 players on the table I think (two tables total) and Pirahn is first to act. He's also the dealer so StartlingGropes wife is sitting in his official seat, peaks at the cards, and then shows Pirahn. Pirahn says "that's the worst starting hand, we don't want to play that" and mucks. I am next to act and look at 77. I have somewhere in the 11-13bb range and am now very confused. The assumption is that a 7 is now dead because it's in the 72 'worst hand' Pirahn had so I showed him what I had and then folded. There was some debate as to whether it's still a shove or not.

After the game was finished I checked with Ian and Lappin and the general consensus was that it's probably still a shove but you lose some equity. Here is how the numbers work out I think..

Capture.JPG.66dcfe87cab7b3b46688aeb468746d2f.JPG

With not knowing what anyone else had in the hand I can only go by percentages but my understanding of this is that if I was called by someone holding a top 30% hand then I'm losing money.

This is the point where I don't know where to go to find a more definitive answer. Do we take ICM into consideration? There was probably 12-15 players left with 3 getting paid but does that really matter? I think Robin would have called me light, does that matter? I tried running things through ICMizer with rough numbers but basically I don't understand it and I don't know if you can kill a 7 in it to alter the outcome. Does anyone know how we go about solving this a little more accurately?

Either way it was a fun one because it's a situation that can never happen online. Chances are it won't happen to most people live either because exposed cards are pretty rare and you have a pocket pair to match them are even more rare. I feel like there is an Irish man in Vegas that will be able to give me a whole load of GTO voodoo to explain the situation so I'll maybe send him an email with the details and see what he comes up with after the WSOP.

 

I was going to write about the start of June but there are enough words here already so I'll leave it for another day :) Spoiler alert, it's a winning month so far :Cool:

 

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Yea, I think this is the way to get the correct answer:


@MoreTBC wrote:

 I feel like there is an Irish man in Vegas that will be able to give me a whole load of GTO voodoo to explain the situation so I'll maybe send him an email with the details and see what he comes up with after the WSOP.

But here's what I noticed.

Comparing pocket sevens' equity with a dead 7 against different % ranges doesn't really tell us if it's a profitable shove or not. I think you know your hand doesn't need to be ahead of the calling range for the shove to be profitable. 😃

But if we compare 77 with a dead 7 against some other hands we should be shoving there, comparing equities vs calling range might tell us something.

My assumptions are: We are playing 12bb effective with 4 players behind. There's a 10% ante. Everyone is playing nash equilibrium, so the widest calling range is BB with about 17%. We are ignoring ICM.

So for example, we could also be shoving there hands like 33, A5s, QTs:

caseofdead7.thumb.png.a1c7297a708b1493217f59253ea95c6e.png

We see we lose about 5% of equity against the calling range when the seven is dead. But when we compare it to those other hands from our shoving range,  we're still doing better when called, despite the dead seven.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Remember the days when I used to update this thing every few days? Those were good times :annoyed:

 

June - Week 1 - 1st to 4th

The more I read back over old entries the more I realise they are a bit self indulgent. Originally when I decided to start a blog it was to hold myself accountable for everything I was doing regarding poker and also to show people what it's actually like as a small stakes player. There are plenty of blogs and vlogs out there to give you a peek into the exciting world of the high rollers and the mid stakes crushers but nothing that really shows what it's like for the guy with a >1k roll that was trying to follow BRM and play low stakes, specifically on Unibet. You can watch bankroll challenges on Twitch and Youtube but they're not here so it can be hard to relate and the guys doing them are normally pros doing it for fun or guys that are taking a shot and can play 24/7. If you're an average Joe you work 9-5 and you have commitments so you can't just sit and grind all day. You can't spend 2 hours every day 'studying' or watching training videos. The blog was designed for those guys because I'm one of those guys and it would be something I'd want to read if I was on the other side of the keyboard.

Now when I read blogs like Dara's, @ChapInAChair's, Karl Parrish's etc. I feel like the majority of these posts are just 'Look what I won today' kinda posts and don't really serve much purpose. Everyone likes to complain about bad beats and brag about big wins, that's the same for all players, but to read it's not that exciting. All the mentioned blogs have a narrative and storylines that make them interesting with even needing results in them. I'd like this blog to be more like that.

I was added to a Facebook group a few months ago called Ace-High which has a wide variety of people in it posting about a wide variety of poker related things. For all the good content and discussions that I've scrolled though since joining the group one thing has stood out time and time again...

 Capture.JPG.ac97105f5c35df2d6570fd16b001d26a.JPG

You probably see these types of posts once a day as a minimum on the group. It's not specific to any one poster or site and this was just the first one I found as an example. Now I know how good it feels to dance around the mindfield of a big MTT and run deep but nobody really cares if your 50th out of 74 left. If we're all really honest we probably wouldn't care if this poster (or any other) finished 9th, it's all about the trophies and the big scores. The majority of this blog is a post like the one above, just with many, many, more words.

How to solve this self created problem? I don't actually know :) It's the nature of the beast that results are the benchmark of success in poker so not reporting on them seems to defeat the purpose of using the blog to be accountable and to show that you can make a little money (or lose it) playing the low stakes. On the flip side, I'd like it to be more entertaining and less robotic so that it's a better read for people who don't personally care how good or bad I'm doing :) It's a work in progress I guess and we'll just have to see how it develops.

With all that being said, here are some results from week one in June..

*Checks results sheet*

Turns out I played one day and made 88 cents 🤣. A single MTT cash in the €1 Deepstack Bounty, finishing 9th with 0 bounties, was the only positive results. Luckily all the other MTTs I played were via tickets so did not cost me anything in BR terms.

 

June - Week 2 - 5th to 11th

Possibly the biggest week ever on Unibet as a MTT player ran from the 5th to the 11th. The 50k GTD €100 R/A on Sunday 11th sounded on paper like it was going to be a expensive loss for Unibet considering that the existing 'Sunday Major' had a €4k GTD which it barely break and normally has less than 100 players. I think everyone ended up being delighted that it smashed the GTD and had the addons been working would have gone well beyond the 65k? it reached. I played in the event but we'll get into that after a quick summery of the rest of the week.

Monday started off the week well. With the Moving on up promo running and missions to complete I was diversifying my game types to try and get maximum value. It's a little tricky to do when you have €5 in your account to work with but we got there. Won a €1 SNG and a buy in at NL4 to get things going before hitting the MTT streets.

I still had a number of €4 tickets left from when I converted all my bonus points so I got into the two bounties, the comm league, a deepstack turbo and the 1k r/a. Out of those five I finished 9th in the early bounty and final tabled the 1k. Ended up finishing 4th in that one for €71 to complete my first €100 profit day since the end of April. Dear God did the bankroll need a boost like that! I thought I was going to be hitting the freeroll streets before that bink.

Cue 5 days of losing :( When completing missions and moving on up I was breaking even or winning but I continued the trend that started in May and got crushed in MTTs over and over. By the time Sunday rolled round I had burned through the €70 profit I had won on Monday and was back to the €35 mark.

I decided on the Sunday that I was just going to make a deposit to play the 50k. I wanted to be part of the tournament and I thought it was going to be good value to play. I know it's completely against BRM and all that but I saw it as a one off shot take. I had also bricked every sat I played to try and qualify for it 🤣. I deposited enough to cover a buy in and an addon just in case I was running well. It turned out I did not need the addon because a) the addons didn't work and b) I didn't survive to use to a potential addon. I didn't have any major hands or suckouts to discuss I just got gobbled up by the structure. To compound the pain of not having a deep run in the 50k I bricked every single other MTT and sat I played during Sunday, 16 in total inc teh 50k sats. My results still show the day as being profitable because the deposit acts a boost but it was a big losing day to round off a losing week.

 

June - Week 2 - 12th to 18th

It was time to take some time off. I thought I'd wrote about this already but I can't find it so maybe I wrote it out in my head and never actually typed it out. After Glasgow I received a €25 UK tour ticket. I do not know why I got this ticket so I asked the superpowers if they knew and they couldn't work it out either and just said to keep it. Then I received a second ticket. This one was accompanied by a PM from Pirahn saying he had got Robin to send me one of his tickets. An incredible gesture from a gentleman I had met for the first time in Glasgow. This gave me €50 to try and get myself to another UK stop on the cheap. I felt (and still feel) that these tickets deserve my full attention and that I want to do everything I can to make sure I can, at the very minimum, can give Pirahn back his ticket and have some left over. I'd also quite like to get to Nottingham because I had so much fun in Glasgow.

In order to do this I decided I was going to take some time off actually playing and focus on learning about becoming a better player, specifically in the satellite game. I spent a day trying to find as many articles and videos about how to play sats, use ICMizer and any other resources that would help me maximize my chances of getting a return on the tickets and my time. I cleaned my computer desk completely over the weekend so I had a fresh and clean space to work in, complete with a new notepad and pen to take notes. Previously my desk was a wash with midi/music devices I barely used and 100 cables of different shapes and sizes so it was a long overdue clear out. I ended up binning 4 black bags worth of crap I'd been collecting over the years and felt good for it. A good blogger would now show you a picture of the clean desk but I'm at work writing this so I can't 😏.

Now I didn't stop playing completely. There were still missions to complete and moving on up to get through. Much like the previous week I had a winning Monday and then lost for the next few days. Turned things around on Saturday with several small winning sessions in PLO4 and a 6th in a €1 turbo to get some much need green colour on the results spreadsheet.

Sunday was a turning point. A picture says 1000 words I believe they say...

Capture.JPG.b8f39d577554acef13604d7355f35477.JPG

I started the day with €30 in my account and went on a several hour long sun run. It was my first big MTT session of the week and it went really well as you can see. Even the non profit MTTs were deep runs (The bounty deepstack was KK < A4 when the flop came 235) so it was about as pure a run I've had for as long as I can remember. 6 FTs and 2 gold trophies is a fantastic Sunday and hopefully a turning point with regards to the recent run/play bad.

I'm about half way through the satellite resources I collected so I plan to finish those and then start focusing on the UK tour sats this week. Fewer tables and more focus while playing them is the goal for the next week along with taking notes and possibly recording a sat session. As soon as I start playing the sats there will be hands to discuss, I promise!

 

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@KrustyTheClown wrote:

Good read.

Would be interesting indeed if you'd post some hands.

If you'd post cashgame hands I'll gladly analyze them for you :)


Some good news and some bad news on that fdront @KrustyTheClown.  Good news, I've been recording hands over the last week to put in here in the next blog post so I've got 3 or 4 to write about. Bad news, I don't play cash NLHE so they're mostly MTT/ICM things and there is also a PLO cash hand :) I'll get it all typed up at some point in the next week.

Have you read my blog HERE... It's long isn't it :)
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Good read mate. 

Granted I've only read the first few pages and the last but still, I can relate the micro games and also not knowing about equity and what not that you mentioned a while back,  I'm just not ready for all the stastical nonsense the now . . .or am I . (Maybe grab myself a book as I seem to be putting a lot of hands in, at least  till my bankroll hits €0 and my ticket rush busts)

Also a fellow scot.

Good luck with the blog. 

 

 

 

 

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So I've managed to get an afternoon off work by accidentally turning up this morning when I was supposed to be in at lunchtime so it's freed up some time to type lots of words.

June - Week 4 - 19th to 25th

I have something I would like to share with your all...

Sat Strategyhttp://www.gripsed.com/satellites/http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/satellites/satellite_strategy/multi-table-tournament-satellite-strategy.htmlhttps://www.flopturnriver.com/poker-strategy/andy-holts-guide-to-satellite-poker-tournaments-19108https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/thinking-poker-satellite-tournaments-20047.htmhttps://www.upswingpoker.com/satellite-poker-tournament-strategy/http://www.bluffeurope.com/poker-news/en/poker_strategy/Beam-me-up-How-to-play-satellites-_10832.aspxhttps://www.pokerschoolonline.com/blogs/ouchbadbeat/my-mtt-satellite-tips-top-secret-don-t-readhttps://www.pocketfives.com/articles/satellite-tournament-strategy-277101/ICMizerhttp://www.icmpoker.com/en/video/https://www.pokervip.com/article/view?slug=icmizer-guide-to-improve-your-tournament-playhttp://www.gripsed.com/grinder/how-to-use-icmizer-effectivelyICMhttp://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/tournament/icm/how/https://www.pokerstrategy.com/poker-software-tools/icm-trainer/ http://www.pokerlistings.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-the-independent-chip-model-icm-for-tournament-poker-players **http://www.gripsed.com/grinder/icm-strategy-in-actionhttps://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/adjusting-to-icm-at-tournament-final-tables/http://www.thinkingpoker.net/articles/improving-your-mtt-skills/https://www.twitch.tv/videos/153577003 - Buehlero FT ICM reviewGeneralhttps://www.upswingpoker.com/category/poker-quizzes/https://www.upswingpoker.com/category/poker-strategy/

That's the list of articles and videos I've been working through in preparation for the UK Tour satellite grind. Most of them kinda say the same thing in regards to strategy but they're all worth a read. The ICMizer stuff goes into the basics of using the program and there is some good general ICM based stuff too. Hopefully you find something useful in there, I know I did :)

People also demanded more pictures to break up all the text. Your wish is my command!

IMG_20170623_133103.thumb.jpg.69d835f0464fbc6a63375adea8c87174.jpg

Here is a picture of my newly tidied desk including pink camping chair for the gf when she can't deal with being more than 3 feet away from me. Strangely something as simple as having a clean work space has actually made me more productive. I have been taking notes when playing and reading articles and writing down hand information for putting in the blog. I know, it sounds like lies right? Well let me present the fruits of my labour.

Hand 1

It's moving on up month on Unibet so naturally I chose the PLO route. It's a swingy game and this hand is a perfect example of it

Hero: 9:Spades: 7:Spades: J:Diamonds: 5:Hearts:

Villain: K:Diamonds: 4:Hearts: T:Diamonds: 7:Hearts:

We're playing PLO10 because I had a ticket for it. I am in the small blind and the villain in the big. Preflop action goes I pot to 0.30, villain re-pots to 0.90 and I call. Now I know my hand is not very good but Joey Ingram told me to never fold to 3-bets in PLO and he's won a lot more money than I have so I'm going to listen to his words of wisdom! We're 45%/55% pre-flop so not in too bad shape.

Flop comes 8:Hearts: 3:Diamonds: T:Hearts:. Pot is 1.75

Not the best of flops there. We've got a decent number of outs to a straight but they can't be hearts and no flush draws. Villain has top pair and a flush draw. We're 35%/65% at this point but luckily it goes check/check and we get a free card.

Turn is a 9:Diamonds:

We have made the straight, excellent stuff. It's not the nut straight but it's pretty close and will be scary for the villain if they don't have a J or Q in their hand. The villain has now added a straight draw to his flush draw so probably quite happy about his hand still. This was reflected in the better that went pot/pot/all-in/call :Rofl:. Pot is now 20.85 and we're a 57%/43% favourite.

River is the 9:Hearts:

:Waterfall:

I had already made a few buyins on the ticket so it was not the end of the PLO10 adventure. It did end eventually but I can't remember how. F for the PLO10 ticket. Does anyone get away from the hand on the turn? Should I have kept the pot small or did I just get spanked by RNGesus. I'm a PLO goof, help me out.

 

Hand 2

There is nothing particularly exciting about how this hand played out, I just wanted to see equities and highlight Aces suck in PLO :)

PLO1_20-06-17.png.8e2de6470f08cbea80559e02e415b449.pngPLO1EV_20-06-17.png.d25d0fbeda8ddd1d590d46311baed85f.png

I'm pretty sure it all went in pre-flop or on the flop. Those double suited connected hands really do well don't they.

 

Hand 3

Don't tell the mods but this one wasn't actually on Unibet :Wow:. We are at most 3 people away from a ticket for a $7.50 MTT and we in the following tricky position.

PSICMhand1_23-06-17.PNG.43847ba06fec2bdea74b3bd5244242c3.PNG

I had no idea if this was a call or not. I was amazed nobody had raised this close to the bubble as the BB is forced all in as they didn't have enough chips. It folded round to me in the SB and I was left with a decision I've never had before. With 23k in the pot do I put 2k in and try and hit something?

PSICM1_23-06-17.thumb.PNG.f3d0c054685bd3b13cc55e46cc3d9d1f.PNG

Assuming I've set up ICMizer right it turns out I should not put my 2k in. I figured it would be close but it's not until you run these you realise what kind of hands you can and cannot play. I, of course, did this analysis after the fact and called.. and lost. Through some sort of blind luck other players in the tournament felt like a gamble and I won a ticket two hands later with 4 antes :Thumbsup:

I did not cash in the main MTT :(

 I have three more hands to go but I'll save them for the next post :) They are all ICM based decision with hopefully correct ICMizer analysis so if you liked the stuff above you're in for a treat.

As far as results go it's basically been identical to last week. Small loses all week and then bink something on Sunday. This week it was the Ten-X Turbo Bounty for €110 :) I've only played 2 UK tour sats but they were both €1 tickets and did not go well :( I had one other final table on the Sunday but other than that it was a quiet week playing the bare minimum to complete Moving on Up and use up some expiring €10 MTT tickets. Profit for the week was about €65 which works for me and gets the bankroll back into the €2xx zone. That means we now have a decent cushion for playing €4 MTTs and playing the odd €10. 

In the ticket bag I now have a PLO4 from the missions flip tourney and a PLO25 cash ticket from Moving on Up, the two June mission tickets, a Saturday Stack ticket for creating a Haiku about Ian Simpson killing cats and 12x €4 UK Tour tickets :). Plenty of 'free' play to get through in the next few weeks and maybe a big ol' bink in the Stack one weekend :)

Next time out, the end of month review and those ICM hands I keep going on about :)

 

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Turns out I don't feel like playing and I do feel like typing :) Here's some more hands from the last weeks play that confused and bemused me.

 

Hand 1

 ICM1_23-06-17.PNG.0001f0b5b9a2688fd9055a61e41ead9b.PNG

So I played a €4 Step-it-up this week. These are basically sats but you're playing for money instead of tickets. The prizes are fixed and there is sometimes a booby cash prize as in this case. We're on the final table and 4 people are going to walk away with €20 while one poor sod will get €2.80 back. As you can see from the screenshot the big stack has limped and it folded round to me with 4's and 11bb. You would expect the big stack limper to be opening pretty wide so I thought shoving may lead to some easy chips. On the other hand we're in an early position so there could be plenty of better hands behind. I never know what to do with these small pair hands and whether they are good to shove in a situation like this so I asked the ICM bot.

 

ICM1results_23-06-17.thumb.PNG.b235bcfa68966dda0a92faafeb1fedf6.PNG

 

The ICMbot is very clear that you should not be shoving 4's, infact you should not be shoving a lot in this specific scenario. There could be some debate as to what the big stack is opening with as I didn't have a read on them so I set it to 40% of hands and I also set the BB's range high because with only 4bb left they would probably just chuck it in if there was a lot in the pot. I know I would be shoving 9's to 7's in this spot before running this so it's something I will be thinking about more in future.

What did I do? I timed out trying to take the screenshot and folded :Rofl:.

 

Hand 2

ICM2_23-06-17.PNG.ac9c31925e1131fb418c9f22d911b3b7.PNG

 

Same MTT, different situation. We're down to 8 now and still hovering around the 10bb mark. The shortest stack has shoved and it's folded round to me in the big blind. This is another thing I am pretty clueless about when it comes to ICM, calling ranges. I'm pretty confident with shoving things into unopened pots but when I'm on the calling side I'm pretty clueless as to what's good and bad.  Would you call something like this for 3 of your 10bb?

 

ICM2results_23-06-17.thumb.PNG.6b43037b3ca459a47f0856da69955d39.PNG

 

I've probably given the CO's hand a little more credit than it deserves.. *checks Snapshove* actually I was only 3% off but I doubt it'll make that much of a difference to the results. T4s is a fold but it's not far away and the amount of hands you could call with is surprising to me. I guess it'll be something that becomes less surprising over time as I run more of these in more spot. If this was for a bounty I'd be snapcalling (whether it is a correct decision or not) so it's become a training process to not look at these situations through bounty hunting glasses :)

What did I do? I can't remember but I imagine I folded because I have a 3rd hand from the same MTT :)

 

Hand 3

ICM3_23-06-17.PNG.b807fc7387374dea4b3dad77fbc8b26f.PNG

 

Now you're going to have to pretend I'm not old and slow and didn't get the screenshot after the decision was made. The action went limp, limp, min raise before it got to me with the 8's. I'm guessing I'm gonna know the answer but is this a clear fold? Having seen the hand play out it was in this case but is there ever a case for going all in. Would you need specific reads on all the players to know they're limping a lot or min raising with garbage? Looking back at this screenshot it was a terrible all in. The initial limp is screaming strength and then the min raise is doing the same thing. Chalk this one up in the bad play column :(

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The step it ups are great and should get way more love here at Unibet.
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We're gonna win on so many levels! We're gonna win, win, win. You're gonna get so tired of winning, you're gonna say: "Mr. President please, we don't wanna win anymore, it's too much!" And I'm gonna say: "I'm sorry, we're gonna keep winning because we're gonna make America great again!"
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@MoreTBC, firstly... thanx for the blog once again Mate, I really enjoy reading it & seeing how you go about things. Like I said before....it's like a little window into your poker life...and something to satisfy the voyeur in me Lol... very enjoyable... thanx again. Then I'de like to take a little time and congratulate you on how far you have come. Just for kicks, I went back to the start of your Blog & read a bunch of entries when you first started & then read your last entry & all I can say is Wow! Your last entry reads easy & is so well composed & informative... All the pics also make the world of difference... we visual creatures as you know. Well done Mate it's amazing to see how far you have come... Keep up the great work & good luck! 

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Always remember... You can be... do... or have anything your heart desires !
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