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CuteRaven

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Most of this week I haven't played much poker. I got a mild cold earlier this week, and also started feeling weirdly light headed/tired, so I didn't feel like playing.

I went to get some blood tests, apparently I have vitamin D levels slightly under the recommended level. I forgot to start taking the vitamin D supplements early enough this autumn (oops 🤣). That's a mistake in a cold dark wasteland like autumn Finland :p. 

Anyway, enough of my stupid health worries 🤣. I played some poker this weekend, mostly the 50 € HU SNG. I lost a bit, bankroll is now 4935.85€. Mostly some standard variance. I played against one particularly interesting opponent, I was impressed by their play. They did a lot of unusual stuff, like overbetting a lot, and not being afraid to call down much lighter than most players (especially in flop textures where I have the range advantage and can put a lot of pressure). They were very agressive in certain spots, but also choosing those spots carefully, and being quite passive in others, not trying to overbluff and win every pot. There were also some pretty weird hands that kind of make sense but I have never seen other human players (except maybe fish) do those things (like check raising flop and then calling a 3bet jam in a limped pot, on a flop of Kh 8h 7s, they had Qh8d against my flush draw of 3h2h. It was 20 BB effective preflop). They also did some weird stuff like open raising 2.5 BB where effective stack was 10 BB. I played that player yesterday, and saw the again today, it was obviously the same player even though they had changed their alias, the style is so distinctive.

The hand in question where I got owned by Qh8d:

Hand replay for this hand: http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/10180026

Table €50 SNG 2 Seat - 15.00/30.00 - No Limit Hold'Em - Total prize €97
*** Seated players ***
Seat 1: Hero (880)
Seat 2: Villain (1120)
*** Blinds and button ***
Hero has the button
Hero posts small blind 15
Villain posts big blind 30
*** Hole cards ***
Dealt to Villain [8d Qh]
Dealt to Hero [2h 3h]
*** Preflop ***
Hero raises 45 to 60
Villain calls 30
*** Flop *** [8h 7s Kh]
Villain checks
Hero bets 60
Villain raises 180 to 180
Hero raises 760 to 820, and is all-in
Villain calls 640
*** Showdown ***
*** Turn *** [8h 7s Kh] [5c]
*** River *** [8h 7s Kh] [5c] [4d]
Hero shows [2h 3h], High card
Villain shows [8d Qh], A Pair of Eights
Villain wins 1760
Hero finished the tournament in 2nd place
Villain finished the tournament in 1st place, and won €97
*** Summary ***
Total pot 1760
Seat 1: Hero: bet 880 and won 0, net result: -880
Seat 2: Villain: bet 880 and won 1760, net result: 880

Obviously I have to also feature a successful stationy hero call every time I update this :p

Hand replay for this hand: http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/10180025

Table €50 SNG 2 Seat - 15.00/30.00 - No Limit Hold'Em - Total prize €97 
*** Seated players ***
Seat 1: Hero (1000)
Seat 2: Villain (1000)
*** Blinds and button ***
Hero has the button
Hero posts small blind 15
Villain posts big blind 30
*** Hole cards ***
Dealt to Villain [6s Th]
Dealt to Hero [As 9d]
*** Preflop ***
Hero raises 45 to 60
Villain calls 30
*** Flop *** [3c 7s 8c]
Villain checks
Hero checks
*** Turn *** [3c 7s 8c] [4d]
Villain bets 165
Hero calls 165
*** River *** [3c 7s 8c] [4d] [4h]
Villain bets 775, and is all-in
Hero calls 775, and is all-in
*** Showdown ***
Hero shows [As 9d], A Pair of Fours with an Ace kicker
Villain shows [6s Th], A Pair of Fours with a Ten kicker
Hero wins 2000
Villain finished the tournament in 2nd place
Hero finished the tournament in 1st place, and won €97
*** Summary ***
Total pot 2000
Seat 1: Hero: bet 1000 and won 2000, net result: 1000
Seat 2: Villain: bet 1000 and won 0, net result: -1000

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Ok, so I realize probably the hands that I posted don't make much sense without context so here is my subjective analysis.

Q8 vs 23:

This hand was during the first SNG of many that I played vs this player. I had been somewhat overly cbetting because I'm used to most players overfolding flops. This player had been checkraising me a few times in response, so I started toning down the cbetting. On this flop they decided to checkraise again, however this flop favors the button because the button can have things like 77, 88, KK sometimes and Kx with better kickers (AK, KQ) more often (because BB would theoretically always reraise most of these hands preflop). Only stuff like K7 and K8 and 78 are strong value here for the big blind. So normally check raising here makes little sense with anything but a narrow range, but check raising weaker hands like Q8 for value makes sense as an exploit against someone that cbets too much. Calling my 3bet is a good read against someone that is frustrated by all the constant check raising (on a board where it looks like big blind is full of crap with this raise). I probably would be overbluffing here. I think this was definitely a case of villain owning me with exploitative play.

A9 vs T6 (also forgot to mention, this was against that same player):

BB should have the stronger range after I check back the flop, at least on this sort of runout, hence the overbetting from villain (I think that's the reason at least). But I had good timing reads and also the river card is pretty good and misses all draws :p

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Guess I'll offer my 2 cents on the hands seeing as you posted them.

The Q8 get it in for value is interesting. The dynamics heads up provides can be interesting. It worked for him this time but seems overly ambitious to me. I don't think you get owned, he just finds your lightest ever jam here with a hand he shouldn't have. I think flatting in position and playing turns makes sense with your hand.  It's nice to have a natural bluff with a hand that has no connectivity with the board so that you can still find bluffs on cards like 6s, 9s, tens, jacks that are gonna connect with you a lot, and it's also a hand that isn't really that sad to fold on the turn facing a bet. Also when you jam and get called you probably only 30% vs his range, maybe even a touch less if he shows a lot of better fds.

Lovely being shown a bluff in the A9 hand, but think you get a touch lucky here. Villain's bluff is good and he uses a good combo. When you're bluffcatching having a 9 is a pretty bad card as it's a card that's frequently in his bluffing range and never in his value range. (95, 96, t9, j9) I honestly would just fold turn and get bluffed, but nice that it worked out. Seeing him show this combo isn't proof of an overbluff and if his frequencies are reasonable your call down is going to be losing quite a lot imo.

 

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Thanks for the opinions @Groggy !

Q8 hand:

Yeah, I agree that raising Q8 is generally overly ambitious, I think GTO would probably either call here 100% or raise a tiny percentage of the time for board coverage (if the 8 pairs, or Q comes etc.) or protection.

Even exploitatively I think the raise probably should be a minority play but it's pretty cool/interesting given the dynamic.

As for my jam, I think it's not great with hindsight. Normally the vast majority of my continuing range would want to call in position. I'm called by many dominating hand here like you said. Basically at the time I just thought WTF is this person raising with here, I think they will overfold to a jam given their checkraising frequency so far and the board texture. The call with Q8 caught me off guard :p

A9 hand:

I basically agree with everything you said. The main reason I called was I had (or thought that I had) a strong read which made bluffs very much more likely. Also, it's not the greatest reason to call hands like these but I think there is sometimes some additional tilt equity in calling down with garbage and being correct XD.

Your comment about heads up dynamics reminded me of the "poker god" series of videos by Joe Ingram, where he reviews some insane NLHE hands played at the highest stakes online. I just assume most of these reviewed hands to be some crazy exploits by players that know each others play style way too well.

Here is an example of the videos (especially the first hand, WTF??? :D)

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Those hands are fun. I can make guesses on what is happening in most of them but obviously it's quite a few levels above me!

I think what is happening in the first hand is that OTB is using tens without a heart as one of the most efficient turn bluff raises. His hand has really good blockers to JT and AT which LLinus is always putting stacks in with, and it's a fairly efficient bluff in that it has 4 outs to the nuts and 2 outs to a hand that is going to win often. Holding tens reduces LLinus' strongest value combos a lot when LLinus has all offsuit versions of those hands in his range. Maybe he expects to get instant folds from some of LLinus' weaker Ax on the turn. If he expects some of these to fold, when LLinus calls and the king rolls off and LLinus shoves, he might discount a lot Ax from LLinus's range. (or possibly doesn't expect Ax to shove river for value) so when he faces a jam thinks LLinus has enough bluffs (potentially T6h-T9h, J7h-J9h, 54h, 53h, 43h) to profitably call now when he only needs to win 20% of the time, even though originally it was a bluff. For value maybe he figures LLinus only has JT, KQ, some AQ but not all, possibly some KJ KT stuff. I have no idea if LLinus is supposed to value shove a bare ace here. If your LLinus with a hand like AT here, what are you expecting to call you if you shove for value? Maybe LLinus does shove any Ax, and maybe tens can still profitably call, you could probably count the combos.

Also one thing to consider is LLinus is an absolute GTO machine, so he is probably going to find an perfect bluffing frequency to balance out his value range (unless he is going for an exploit), so when you have a hand that blocks LLinus' value and unblocks his bluffs, it's probably one you have to call.


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@Groggy Yeah, the hands def very interesting!

I can also make a guess on the first hand in the video, though I think I'm probably way off from what they were really thinking.

Flop check:

The flop check from OTB is quite interesting. I think it means one of two things. Either OTB has a narrow checking range (some air, underpairs, Q9s, AA stuff like that) and bets small (e.g 1/4 pot) quite often. Or perhaps even more likely is that OTB mixes checks and huge cbets (pot size or more) on a texture that his range crushes. Or maybe OTB has a complex mixed startegy with different sizes, who knows...

Turn check raise:

The main reason I see for OTB to do this with a range including TT is if he thinks LLinus is likely to overbluff/oversemibluff this spot. An overbluffer would be in a tough spot facing this price in this SPR. They have to overfold or overly jam (or both) with their bluffs. They have to make akward calls with most draws/semibluffs.

I agree with most of what you said except that I don't think LLinus ever folds Ax for this price. I think it would be a big exploit if LLinus folds anything else than stuff with insignificant equity and showdown value for this tiny price (LLinus only needs to win 23% of the time to call and having an A blocks a lot of value. If LLinus folds more than 29% of range then OTB instaprofits with the bluff). I could be wrong.

The raise could also be an antisolver strategy if OTB think LLinus hasn't solved for tiny sizings and would react suboptimally.

River call:

It makes sense if OTB thinks LLinus overbluffs with missed draws in this tiny SPR. In LLinuses shoes, all Ax chops now with other Ax on the river so probably all of it jams for what little is left, at least if LLinus thinks OTB is sticky enough (seems likely :Rofl:) and/or rarely traps river with Kx+ if it even takes this line in the first place.

Yeah, these players are absolute beasts but they are still human and thus unbalanced in some small ways at least. Probably they are trying to play generally sound strategies, but also maxexploit each others perceived leaks/imbalances (even the small ones) in a big GTO filled leveling war :Laugh: I dunno, I might overestimate the amount of exploitative play going on here, but I don't see how a hand like this can happen if all that these players are doing is trying to approximate GTO better than their opponents :Rofl:

Like I said though, I'm probably way off, the analysis is just speculation.

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Bankroll is now 3318.18€. Yep, that means that I have recently had a pretty bad downswing 🤣.

The culprit is NL 100 that I played earlier this week (Monday, Tuesday). Some of it was definitely runbad/rust, but also some of it was really bad tilt on Tuesday towards the end of an 8 hour session. I decided to take a break after Tuesday to reflect on how I ended up in playing with such bad tilt, and to spend some time also doing other stuff.

Part of it is the nature of cash games. Unlike in SNG, which I have mostly played, you don't get a "natural break" unless you decide to have one (but in SNG every time an SNG ends, I often make decisions on weather I want a break or not). Therefore, in cash games you need to have the routine or presence of mind to take regular breaks while playing.

Another part of it was playing too many tables. Towards the end of the session the amount of players on the tables started getting smaller, and it started being harder to keep up with the pace. But I didn't close tables at that point and instead kept playing on all tables, because I was kind of exited to play short handed. That coincided with some bad beats and then the tilt started. When you play too fast you play on instinct. You don't have time to reevaluate your decisions or mental state, or to keep your emotions at bay. I feel like playing a good amount of tables is almost more important in cash than other formats, because you are regularly in difficult deep pots in strategic situations that are rare, and the decisions get quite complex. In such a situation thinkiong the hand through and taking reads into account gets quite important.

And finally, my mental game was bad, I had been playing for almost 8 hours with minimal breaks, my brain was feeling a bit fried from the long session of six tabling. I had also been spending too much time working on poker and other stuff in those recent days and not excersizing and sleeping enough.

It started as a challenge for myself to play some volume at cash, but I'm probably going to play some other formats next time. I also sometimes don't like playing cash as much because it feels like you aren't "getting stuff done" (it feels more like a grind than SNG in some weird way, it never really "ends"). Although cash games are interesting in other ways.

I might return to cash later, if I return I will do some things differently:

-Play maybe 4-5 tables instead of 6 to get better reads and be more focused and therefore increase EV a lot (although I think I could just make more 2-3 tabling HU SNG compared to 4-5 tables of cash)

-Take timed breaks every hour

-Play shorter session, maybe max 4 hours

-Keep better track of mental game

Also I didn't realize how huge cash game rake really is (more of that in my results)!

In the end it's not too bad, I have lost almost half my roll before, and recovered.

Results

Recently I got my results for the past 12 months or so from Unibet. I made a Python script that calculated some data from the results and made graphs (if you want to use the script let me know, the code is ugly and hastily made, but it works :p). I posted some of the bigger sample size or otherwise more relevant results here below (though the samples aren't huge by any means).

Some of the more interesting stuff for me was:

-From the sample it looks like I have about 4% ROI at the HU SNG so far for most stakes, which I'm pretty happy with (OBV sample is not big)

-In the 5 man SNG I have the most first and last place finishes, probably because of the aggro style that I played with. I wonder how different it would look for other peoples results :p

-With the current ITM% it seems like I could be profitable playing Hexas, though it's a huge variancefest rollercoaster and the profit potential doesn't seem huge. I'm happy with the results given the fact that the blind levels are so short on average. Of course sample siza is still small.

-I got rekt in cash games, maybe I should stay away from them but I don't like giving up :p. Also, I'm surprised at how huge the rake is at NL 100 for example, I didn't expect that. About 1 buyin of rake every 1000 hands seems a bit insane.

I couldn't be bothered to add the rake into the SNG results because it would have taken a bit more code to do it, but I payed 2086€ rake at the SNGs (pretty much all from HU)

Also in the data I was sent, I found a few lines of some very weird Hexapro data. The lines had buyins and prize pools that did not match. For example, there was some 25€ buyin Hexa with 1.50€ prize pool. Most of the data seems accurate though, gonna ask about how the weird data got into my results file :p.

 

All SNG 2 seat

 

Amount played= 3670

Average buyin= 18.27€

Profit= 2783.64€

ROI= 4.15%

In the money= 53.76%

Place 1 finishes: 1973

Place 2 finishes: 1697

 

1893474193_Oct2020AllSNG2seat.png.d35723cd1c71197fe171a8c7781626dd.png

 

All SNG 5 seat

 

Amount played= 432

Average buyin= 32.64€

Profit= 413.86€

ROI= 2.93%

In the money= 40.74%

Place 1 finishes: 100

Place 2 finishes: 76

Place 3 finishes: 78

Place 4 finishes: 77

Place 5 finishes: 101

 

419697326_Oct2020AllSNG5seat.png.b15ee23f20eff97c1dfd302a76f3372e.png

 

10.00€ SNG 2 seat

 

Amount played= 1189

Profit= 370.80€

ROI= 3.11%

In the money= 53.15%

Place 1 finishes: 632

Place 2 finishes: 557

1169985105_Oct202010SNG2seat.png.b2568e3236b2f0c590d012e59c1998d2.png

 

25.00€ SNG 2 seat

 

Amount played= 1416

Profit= 1460.00€

ROI= 4.12%

In the money= 53.67%

Place 1 finishes: 760

Place 2 finishes: 656

378261191_Oct202025SNG2seat.png.c2dcfeab0d4435699226433483326f2b.png

 

50.00€ SNG 2 seat

 

Amount played= 292

Profit= 726.00€

ROI= 4.97%

In the money= 54.10%

Place 1 finishes: 158

Place 2 finishes: 134

189852013_Oct202050SNG2seat.png.c0e0533f8c187e262465b3a078ece5f1.png

All non-Banzai Hexapros

 

Amount played= 1604

Average buyin= 12.08€

Profit= 989.00€

ROI= 5.10%

In the money= 37.28%

Place 1 finishes: 598

Place 2 finishes: 544

Place 3 finishes: 462

209729201_Oct2020Allnon-BanzaiHexapros.png.d2c7065376f8d756e824342e45c87273.png

 

10.00€ non-Banzai Hexapros

 

Amount played= 829

Profit= 1095.00€

ROI= 13.14%

In the money= 37.09%

Practical rake given the prize pools (vs 6.853% in theory)= -7.60%

Place 1 finishes: 309

Place 2 finishes: 292

Place 3 finishes: 232

You had 388 1.5x multipliers and won 161 of them.

You had 219 3x multipliers and won 77 of them.

You had 154 5x multipliers and won 52 of them.

You had 68 10x multipliers and won 21 of them.

1908271480_Oct202010non-BanzaiHexapros.png.99520c182f2d7d842415a52815ccffde.png

 

Traditional NLHE cash games all stakes

 

Hands played= 49794

Average stakes= 30.47€

Profit= -1471.50€

Rake payed= 1646.22€

Profit before rake= 174.72€

Winrate BB/100 hands= -9.69

 

1623362548_Oct2020TraditionalNLHEcashgamesallstakes.png.dd4d257bc47aa78d22ae1ca9f182ee91.png

 

Traditional NLHE cash games 100€

 

Hands played= 12137

Profit= -1648.69€

Rake payed= 1326.19€

Profit before rake= -322.50€

Winrate BB/100 hands= -13.58

 

1891199079_Oct2020TraditionalNLHEcashgames100.png.5282aadd7276d15fea94fb7f080487f5.png

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tough luck

back when I was counting myself earlier this year my most common finish on every buyin level was 3rd (yep, the donkspot), 5th was by far the least while 1st and 2rd were about level and slightly more common than 4th. Always wondered me because if anything I am/was too tight in bubble spots. Maybe it came from 5th place being taken by a stackdonating donkfish most of the time?! Who knows

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@Dennis__  Interesting! It's pretty fun how evidence of different play styles can show up somewhat quickly in the position distribution. I think with the sample that I have the rough position distribution is much more reliable info than anything about my winrate (after all, a winrate can change drastically with two or three more/less wins).

Edit: Also it's quite hard to finish 5th if you play tight while stacks are deep so a small amount of 5th place finishes makes a lot of sense if there are are some fish or more aggro players in the SNG that will often take that position

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That's a sharp drop of the bankroll, no suprise as 100NL is really cruel 🤣 

Suprised you play such long sessions, think on average I play 1-2h and sometimes 3-4h during the weekend but that depends on the amount of spare time I have. Playing too long definitely takes the oomph out of my concentration, it's like I just get bored after a while. I wouldn't say it affects my decision making too much but I just lose interest. I'm mostly playing (too) long sessions to chase losses lol. Knowing when to quit is a valuable skill as well, sometimes dragging out sessions when we know we shouldn't play on as there is always time later in the day or the next day.

I'm sure you'll work your way up again as you seem to have a good work ethic and enough skill to beat the games 🆗

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@P0kerM0nkI don't normally play that long, usually I also play between 2-4 hours :) . I thought that with some courses ending and the extra free time plus the flop race promo, I wanted to try and play some volume. Playing 8 hours was a mistake. I also usually play that long only if I'm chasing losses, or on the rare caffeine fueled all nighter sunrun, or if I'm trying to push myself to play more volume. Cash games also really punish tilt because the losses are uncapped :p

One thing that I also didn't consider enough was that the rake has a huge effect on both preflop and post flop strategy. Spots that are marginally profitable in situations where individual hands have zero rake (like SNG) are often really unprofitable in a cash game. It has a huge effect on preflop ranges, and high rake does things like make SB and many other spots (e.g CO vs UTG open) pretty clear 3bet or fold, and makes calling preflop (and postflop) a lot worse (I understand now why TAG is considered gospel at cash games). I had heard about it before but didn't really appreciate the scale of it before. The 100 NL rake really is crushing at the games :p, winning at a winrate of about 10 BB/100 from each player. It's a bit absurd when people talk about 8 BB/100 being a great 100 NL winrate, when without rake they would be winning at 18 BB/100 (rake takes away over half even from some of the best players!). Is 400 NL (where the rake takes 5 BB/100) more beatable than 100 NL given rake? I'm not sure. Anyway, it makes me prefer SNGs a bit more even, playing tight is not as much fun :p

People often talk about Lottery SNG rake (which also takes away slightly over half of the winnings from the best players) being absurdly high (which I can agree with), but cash game rake seems rarely talked about in comparison. I guess in cash games edges are big compared to variance, so poker rooms can get away with it while some players still earn quite comfortably.

Edit: Although maybe rakeback is better for cash games than other formats, or maybe not? I have no idea. Of course some spots might become more profitable if rakeback is factored in to the pot odds :p

 

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I wouldn't say being TAG is being that nitty but yeh calling in the SB is pretty much not encouraged nowadays especially in higher rake environments. Funny enough I do see quite some regs call funny hands in SB at times but also shows you games should be more than beatable. I don't know about SNG's but like you say, there is a huge edge difference in the player pool in cashgames even at 100NL and even between all the regs. About 400NL, I don't know but I'll let you know next year 😀

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@P0kerM0nk Yeah TAG isn't that nitty, but optimal raked cash ranges are still quite different from optimal SNG (or other zero rake ranges) ranges (and well, that's not even taking ICM into consideration yet :p)

Just to emphasize the difference that rake makes for anyone who might be interested, you can compare the difference between the preflop ranges that Pluribus and PokerSnowie. They are both poker bots that learned poker by playing versus themselves. The difference is that Pokersnowie played in a raked enviroment where as Pluribus played in a zero rake environment. Unfortunately it does not say how much the rake was for Pokersnowie but I would guess it's close enough to the pretty standard micros net rake of about 4.5%.

Here is some info on Pluribus ranges (if you look at the "detailed frequencies" table): https://pluribus-poker-BANANA.com/2019/08/05/pluribus-poker-preflop-defense-detailed/

I can't post the proper Pluribus link because:
"The message body contains BANANA, which is not permitted in this community. Please remove this content before sending your post. We don't allow posts in other languages than English, and swearing is not allowed either."
Replace "BANANA" in the link with "ali" (without the "l" between the letters "a" and "i") to get the link to work.

Here is the Pokersnowie "preflop advisor": https://www.pokersnowie.com/pftapp/index.html

If you look at SB vs BU RFI, Pluribus calls about 14% and 3bets about 11% for a total defend op about 25%. Poker Snowie on the other hand almost only 3bets, with a total defend of about 18%.

If you look at BU vs CO RFI, Pluribus calls 11% and 3bets about 7% for a total defend of about 18%. PokerSnowie on the other hand 3bets about 9% and calls only about 4% for a total defend of about 11%.

Even opening ranges change, if for example BU RFI is compared (Pluribus opens all suited Qx and down to J4s, K8o, T8o for example) https://pluribus-poker-BANANA.com/category/strategy/rfi/

Once again, replace the "BANANA" with "ali" (without the "l" between the letters "a" and "i")

I have been used to playing closer to those zero rake ranges, and didn't realize how far from optimal I was playing preflop in cash, and how much more money I have probably been losing for this reason, calling too much IP and in the SB :Haha:.

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The downswing is in full force now, I can't stop the momentum of it :haha:. Bankroll is now 2604.14 €.

Most of my losses came yesterday, I played a 5 man SNG session while they were still rake free. Mostly played the 50€ SNGs (on the last day that they existed :p), and lost 12 buyins. I only played maybe about 15 of them but just could not win any all ins, came second twice if I remeber correctly and didn't win any. I guess it's pretty standard variance 🤣. Then I played a bit more HU and Hexapro, ran bad there too. Today I played the 25€ HU SNG, and ran quite badly initially, with the bankroll reaching about 2400€, but was able to recover a bit. After that I played some 10€ Hexapro and broke even. At least today was breakeven and not a losing day :p

This downsiwng made me think about when and how often I want to withdraw money. I think I will do something like the following every month:

If my bankroll is below 2000€, don't withdraw anything.

If bankroll is above 2000€, withdraw everything above 2000€ (but a maximum of 1000€)

If bankroll is above 4000€ withdraw 1250€

If bankroll is above 6000€ withdraw 1500€

If bankroll is above 8000€ withdraw 1750€

and so on...it's kind of useless to think about it further since there is a good chance that my bankroll will never even reach above 6000€ (and first I preferably would need to stop this downswing :p), but this way I can get money from poker on a regular basis without removing the whole bankroll, so I still give myself a chance to move up in stakes.

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Bankroll is now 2812.41€.

Have been playing kind of sporadically since the last blog update. I had one 25€ HU SNG session when I ran terribly and lost probably 70-80% of my all ins and getting coolered, dropping about 10 buyins. In another 25€ HU SNG session I ran great, making big hands and won about 10 buyins in a short session. Other than that I feel like I have been runnign pretty average, and playing quite well IMO, slowly winning some of that bankroll back (I have played some 10€ Hexa, 50 € HU SNG, and 25€ 5 man SNG in addition to the 25€ HU SNG)!

I have also been playing with the same alias for the whole week. I think that is mostly not a good idea, but sometimes it's advantageous that your opponenets have some memories about how you play. For example, if some reg plays one or two SNG vs me and sees me make a ridiculous looking bluff in a situation where they would not expect most players to bluff, they might think I'm a maniac and call me the next 5 times that I take a similar line with value hands. And sometimes I can tell when someone who I know to be a reg (or who seems to be a reg) is playing this way, and I can counteradjust. I think I will change the alias again soon though.

My sleep schedule has gotten really bad recently. It's hard to control as a student during covid, who has never been great with consitency/discipline anyway! I really want to try and fix this, especially when it's getting dark outside sooner every day. I'm trying some new things, like switching lights off a few hours before I plan to sleep and setting screen color temperature and brightness really, really low (to the point where it's almost hard to see it and barely usable :p), maybe I'll go for evening walks too. I'm also going to try and convince some friends (some of who have even bigger issues with controlling sleep schedules) to go on morning walks semi-consistently, it's easier to stay motivated for this if you aren't doing it alone (it's one thing to set an alarm clock, it's much harder to resist the temptation to not switch it off and continue sleeping when it actually rings :D). Probably should cut out the evening cup of tea also.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't played that much poker recently, but I have played a bit sporadically. I have mostly been focusing on other stuff. The times thaqt I have played I have usually still been running breakevenish or bad. In particular, I had a short 10€ Hexapro session where I lost 200€ (I saw probably about 4 or 5 qauds in all in situations that session and none of them were to my favour 🤣). Today I decided to play the Community poker league tournamnets though and I was lucky enough to come third in one of them for about 80€! My bankroll is now 2679.34 €

I also decided to try out playing another site where they recently released SNGs, I'm trying to build a bit of a bankroll there starting from the microstakes. I don't really like their SNG software much but they do have pretty nice promotions and rakeback for cash games at least. Anyway, that's not Unibet so maybe I should't talk about it too much on this platform :P

As for my sleep schedule, I have actually been able to improve it a bit! These are the things I have changed:

- Me and some of my friends who also have sleep schedule issues go for a morning walk and eat at the student canteen together around the time when it opens. Seeing the morning sunshine and having something specific to wake up for is useful

-In the evenings a few hours before sleep I switch off ALL the lights off so that it's completely dark. I have noticed that even a small lamp in the corner of the room can prevent me from getting tired. For the electronics that I use I have one of those blue light filters (or red screens/night lights) on at a high or maximum setting. This can even make it a bit hard to see the screen but I think it's worth it. The blue screens of electronics keep you up.

I'm still not perfect with the sleep. Mainly I'm not that great at keeping track of time and planning ahead (for example I should probably be sleeping by now :P), but it has been an improvement.

In case people are interested in the night lights:

For Andoid the app I use is "Red Moon" at max settings (installed from F-Droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.jmstudios.redmoon/) but the app "Twilight" works well too https://twilight.urbandroid.org/. Often I have the inbuilt night light on at the same time because some of the bright icons in the notification panel are not affected by these apps.

If you belong to the Linux master race, you can use "Redshift" http://jonls.dk/redshift/

It works well from the terminal. I usually use this command (replace X and Y withyour rough longtitude and latitude so that it can calibrate with the suns cycles, or you can remove the "X:Y" if you want to use the automatic geolocation services. You can use "redshift -h" to view what different commands do):

redshift -b 1.0:0.25 -t 6500k:1000k -l X:Y -v -r

For Windows I use "F.lux" https://justgetflux.com/. You can go to the settings of the app and enable a broader range of color temperatures. I usually have it at max settings. 

 

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If your pattern is off it can be useful to go out in the mornings as you said @CuteRaven to 'soak' up (sun-) light as it sets your biological clock. This can be hard during the winter although I personally don't really suffer from bad sleeps (but I can have crap sleeps) it can be hard as when I leave for work it's dark and when I get home it's dark, not easy.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/morning-sunlight-exposure-3973908

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Luckily my sleep is usually ok but I do know many with sleep problems. 

No alcohol or caffeine (tea or coffee) at least 4 hours before sleep, preferably 6.

No screens, not even tv, at least one hour before, whether filtered or not. Try reading a real book, either before or while in bed, just before sleep, and gentle background music, no death metal rock thrash garage nonsense.

If your bedroom is too warm it can help to turn down, or even off, the heating in there. 

You should try to have a set time for bed, it can be hard but your body adjusts and prepares for sleep with a regular routine.

Good luck and sleep tight. 👍

 

 

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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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  • 1 year later...

So it's been a long loooong looooooooooong break. Back in late 2020 I went on a big downswing, and lost all motivation for poker. I then withdrew the about 2500€ that I had left in my Unibet account.

Nowadays I'm a relatively happy man, trying to enjoy the outdoors and beautiful summer weather when I can 🍃. All my anxiety (and related) issues are behind me, though I'm still looking for a proper direction in my life.

Yesterday I deposited 60€ in my Unibet account. I tried a bunch of gamemodes: some HU SNG, some 5 handed SNG, some Banzai, and a bunch of tournaments. Mostly it was a lot of fun though I lost 40€ 🤣 (by far most of this was in tournaments). Bankroll is now at 19,89€.

The exception was tournaments, I really didn't enjoy those. As somewhat of an adrenaline junkie who can't focus sitting down for that long, I don't have the patience for tournament gameplay. Also they suck your money out with all the rebuys and addons that are offered.

I also learned back in late 2020 that I suck at cash games. The optimal strategy in cash games is generally lot more tight than SNGs because of rake (it's taken from pots instead of the buy-in). Big hands matter a lot in cash games, so you need to quite patient and careful with frequencies when playing cash games. In cash games one bad hand can cost you all the session profits, in a SNGs it will cost you one of many buy-ins. Also in SNGs you can compensate a lack of theoretical knowledge with a good reading ability (they are more short handed so you face the same players more) and in some cases a decent sense of ICM. With variable stack sizes (and sometimes variable ICM situations) it's impossible to memorize as much in SNGs and "feel players" probably fare better in them than cash games.

Of course in SNGs theory and patience is still important, just as in any sort of poker game! There is still a lot to memorize (for example preflop).

All of this is mostly a long way of saying that SNGs would still be my main game if I started playing poker more again. But I don't want to promise anything regarding poker at this point (or at any point), this hobby has always been mostly for my enjoyment, and if I stop having fun, there is no point in playing. If I start playing more again, I'll try to be a lot more careful with life balance, instead of burning myself out with my hobbies like I sometimes do.

At the moment I'm really rusty, but not quite as rusty as I expected to be. Looks like some things have changed on Unibet also. My favorite new feature are the emojis, good fun for a fun player like me 🤩. Also I didn't see a way to replay the previous hand (in the browser version). Am I blind or was the feature removed? The tournament interface was improved too. Any other cool new features or events that I've missed?

Also some of the people around back in 2020 are still around (and some new ones too ofc). Cool to see, people have been keeping up the grind💪! Hopefully y'all are enjoying your summer (or winter for the two people who live in the southern hemisphere)!

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