Joe Blogs: One Foot in the Poker Dream

[JoeBloggs]

Hello everyone, this will be my first ever poker blog, a little bit about myself first:

I started playing poker in 2016 with €10 or so playing micro stakes cash. I managed to run hot and turn that into €30 or so (without really knowing how to play the game). I then discovered heads up SNGs and was instantly hooked. I was still terrible but I found myself learning more about the game and getting better all the time. I managed to move up the stakes to 50s and 100s within a year with questionable bankroll management and was a bad reg there, but just good enough so that regulars wouldn't play me.

After a bit of time on that site the games dried up and I realised I wasn't actually that good at poker. I started playing spins on 'The site that shall not be named', starting from low stakes. It meant swallowing my ego and accepting that I wasn't the amazing poker player I thought I was before. It was hard at first but learning more and more about the game made me realise how much I still had to learn and how much I could still improve. It took me around a year before I was playing 100s spin and gos. I stayed there for 10000 games or so and then moved on to Unibet.

Since being on Unibet I've been playing mainly the 50s heads up SNGs with some occasional shots at 100s. I'm up around €4000 this year on Unibet playing part time but that includes some bricked MTTs that I've been donking around in.

I'm awaiting my accurate results from Unibet support at the moment so I'll update the thread with graphs when I get those. 

I've been playing mainly under the alias 'gimmytendies' so if you've been playing the 50s you'll probably have seen me around. I haven't met anyone from the community yet and with the current situation it's unlikely I'll be going to any live events anytime so feel free to say hello here if you recognise me or just want to call me a ****reg if I've sucked out on you.

[Brocky]

Hey man, I've been playing HUSNGs on Unibet for a while and we definitely played one game yesterday although no idea what alias I was using (as I change regularly). GL, will be following. You from the UK?

[JoeBloggs]

Hey Brocky,

Thanks man GL to you too, I used to read your blog on here and you were playing on a recognisable alias I think so I remember playing against you. Are you back to playing heads-up now or still on the 6 max grind? I am from the UK yes. 

[Brocky]

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@JoeBloggs wrote:

Hey Brocky,

Thanks man GL to you too, I used to read your blog on here and you were playing on a recognisable alias I think so I remember playing against you. Are you back to playing heads-up now or still on the 6 max grind? I am from the UK yes. 

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I'm doing both, hit a really big downswing in both HU and 6m so decided to get staked for both separately (although 6m not finalised yet).  I'll likely be casually putting in 1-1.5k games per month HU at the 25-100s while attempting to make 6m my main game.  We'll see :P 

I looked back at our game from yesterday, looks like I got revenge today ;) 

I knew you were strong in our final hand as well (you had AA vs my FD/SD) but I couldn't really fold.

[OmahGAWD]

GL Joe!

I play €50 HU sngs often, sadly only in my dreams 🤣

go get em

[JoeBloggs]

Ah man that sucks, hope you turn it around soon.

:laugh: Got wrecked a bit in that one, I think I folded an A there. GG.

 

[JoeBloggs]

Thanks! 

:laugh: I hope you're crushing the games in those dreams then Omah!

[JoeBloggs]

Session Update 10/05/20:

Total Profit: £1010

Profit At 50s: £550

Profit at 100s: £650

Tournaments: -£190

Today was a pretty interesting day. I had one of those mornings where it feels like you can't win a single hand and you're always running into the tops of peoples ranges or they're shoving when your weak or bluffing you with 23o :Tongue:

I was sitting the 100s not getting action most of the morning when one of the recreationals I'd been battling at 50s and had been consistently winning against me decided it was time to up the stakes and sat down at the 100s. At that point my luck changed around and I started running really well and playing much better. I was up around £1500 at the 100s at peak but slowly bled back down to +£650 at the end of the day. 

Overall I think I played ok in the morning, I made a couple of mistakes calling where I shouldn't and got a bit frustrated in the worse parts of the morning. I think I played much better later on and was adjusting well to my opponents. 

I played the supernova which I regged with 30bb, didn't get any realy hands and then busted 20bb BU vs SB calling a shove w. KTs vs QJs. 

I played the £50 UOS last night and used the add-on, busted 10 minutes from day 2 calling a 10bb shove CO vs HJ w. 88 vs AJo which left me pretty short and then KJo  < AA AIPF.  

I also min-cashed the magnuss-carlsen tournament but no chess board for me unfortunately. 

[JoeBloggs]

Session Update 10/05/20:

Total Profit: £860

Profit At 50s: £650

Profit at 100s: £400

Tournaments: -£190

Total Games: 212

Played around 2hr today and lost £150. Pretty standard day, I made a couple of mistakes at the beginning and there was a spot when 2 people sat with me at 100s whilst I was playing a 50 on the side. I usually only play 2 tables and I found it quite hard to focus on the 3 tables so probably lost a bit of value there. 

 

[JoeBloggs]

Update 20/05/20:

Haven't updated this blog in a while, I found recording my results on this blog made me far too focussed on short term results which was negatively impacting my mindset. I think I'll stick to updating results once a month or so and try to only check my balance once a week at most. I think it's a very common leak amongst poker players  and certainly for myself to be constantly checking results which leads to them associating how they played with whether they one or lost that day.

The 2 player SNGs have been going well for me, I'm still taking shots at playing 100s on the days I'm feeling good or if the games look especially soft. I think I want to build up a slightly bigger sample at the 50s before making 100s my main stake though, the swings can be pretty crazy up there so I want to be sure I can handle it before moving up. I'd say I'm slightly up at these since my last update. 

I played quite a few tournaments through the Unibet Series which, aside from a <£200 cash in one £25 tournament, I completely bricked in. I'm going to aim to play less tournaments in the future as at best they're adding a lot of variance to my grind and at worst I'm a losing player in them and they become quite a significant drain on my bankroll.

[OmahGAWD]

You could always park the mtts apart from the juicy ones. I think of the €250 ukpt and €100 uos main events you’d be a big long term fav in those games. The uo weekend this weekend will be juicy too for a player of your quality!😀

[JoeBloggs]

Yeah I think that's what I'll do Omah, even if the €250 event is juicy think I might be too much of a nit to play though :laugh: 

I think the issue with tournaments especially when they aren't your main game is that even if you're a winner in them you just end up burning money until you make it to a big final table or something. 

I think from now on I'm going to treat MTTs more like a gamble and have a budget for them separate from my bankroll. I'll play the €100 main events when there's a series but otherwise stick to games I can win at :laugh:

 

[JoeBloggs]

Session Update 23/05/20:

Today was a really solid day. I ran hot, played well and got a lot of volume in. I think I played around 10 hours today and by the time I finished I was too tired to write an update so I'm updating it today instead.

There is one major thing on Unibet which make it different from other sites and I've been thinking about the best way to approach it, namely the ability to change your avatar and be anonymous. At first you'd think it would be a no-brainer to change your nickname as regularly as possible. If you don't change your avatar you're giving up EV to other regulars who get to play against you knowing something about your strategy while you're going in blind against them. The problem especially in heads up poker with this is that you make the majority of your money from playing against recreational players. If you change your name frequently the chance of you playing a long series of matches against another regular is greater, as they are more likely to think you yourself are a recreational or a weaker regular. If you play all your matches as one avatar and establish a name for yourself as a tough player then the chances of a regular wanted to sit down and play with you are reduced. I'm not too sure what side of the debate I sit on and I've been switching up my nicknames recently, if anyone has any thoughts I'd be interested to hear them. 

Bonus: Managed to make quads twice today and stack my opponent each time, if that isn't running hot I don't know what is :Laugh:

[CuteRaven]

Nice! Interesting blog :D. Those were the stakes I was playing prior to my recent hiatus.