After watching video No. 4 from the ever informative Ultimate 15 Mins Study Guide: produced by CrazyCookie, I will be attempting to use a bi of it to help me decide which flops to cbet, which to chk/c and which to dodge like a the clingy ex at a disco.

I think I'll enjoy doing this one and my cbetting could use a little tlc to be fair.

Also trying a different opening strategy when at the Blaze tables and minraising from everywhere with the lower/mediocre parts of my ranges, 3x the top except for utg where it gets the 4x treatment. It's not exploitable honest it isn't guv!

Cant get HM2 to export hands so this'll have to do for now.

Just two funny hands form this morning:

So the reg says, 'I don't want to split this pot' ...




I say, neither do I Mr GreedyPants ...

When you've been watching people amass huge stacks while yours goes tits up, these are a welcome boost to the old br I can tell you for nothing!

What about our scaly friend here then?

Moi, shipping for value versus a station,




Moi gets called,




aaaannnddd rela...wtf!?




Yes yes I know, I could have had a 4 high, yes, course I could.

Ah, one of those old school bluff-calls, don't see many of those in a session these days.

So I played around 10 hours or so yesterday for a loss of -1.7BI in a bit of a yawnfest for 3 sessions, got it back today and ran into this first couple of circuits.




Just the three diamond runout then Mal? Ye, just the three. Getting tough to find a profitable day this month one way or another, I'll just have to plug on next month is all. Plug, plug, plug ...

I really much try to stick to my 30 minutes and a break though; bad Mal, naughty.

I missed so many flops yesterday I started counting the ones I hit. I actually didn't hit a flop TP or better (and often for nothing at all) for about 45 minutes at the longest, 4 tabling. That's a skill!
I have no clue how many hands I played this month either (difficult without tracking I know), but It'd be interested to see if I played anywhere near to my target of 100K or fell short; I fear the latter with all that's been going on in and out of poker which is a shame.

July 1st tomorrow, damn how time flies, 6 months now on my new contract. I'll need to think of at least one or two goals for the month and do a bit of a review of June.

Hope you all ran good and June brought you what you worked for in the game.

Roll on July, roll on winning; let's work and make it happen!

Told my mrs today I'll be getting a nice bottle of cider from the fridge, settling in for a good long session of poker and if the mighty komodogragonjesus is streaming take a break to watch the master at work.

The session lasted for 20 minutes of torture and pain and that was it, out for -4BI. Didn't even got time to get the cider out ffs. Brutal start to the month to follow the brutality of the last one. There's a pattern here somewhere ...
No idea how much I'm in the hole for now but way over , just way over.

So, I'll study flop textures instead and watch Wales play Belgium. It'll be fun watching somebody else get their butt kicked. At least the cider will be cold by then.

3-0 Belgium

Well done you lot. Cider for me too...

What this guy said.

Best game of the tournament. Gutted for Ramsey but please please knock Ronaldo and his mates out. Please!

Wow 3:1 to the guys, now that is insane! Not only that, they were best on the day to! Even if we do have Bale I really think we're a bit fkd without Ramsey, he really is a good foil. Bu then I thought Belgium would give us a kicking so wtf do I know.

Wales win, WTH is the world coming to, I give up.

gn.

So today's plan, whilst waiting for my br sweep, is to look at some flop textures. I'm not finding getting a 5% advantage difficult so will need to look a bit closer at it. It would of course help majorly, if I knew what I was doing.

I think I like doing this flop cbet stuff. It feels like it'll improve my game in a sensibly linear way, rather than me picking on random pieces of the jigsaw, trying to thump them into place with my fist and expecting the picture to look pretty.

The experience of Blaze - and of watching coach Jon's videos - has taught me something valuable about thinking about the game.
For example, once the money goes int he middle there is nothing we can do to influence the outcome, so why do we microstakes players analyze and dissect these situations so much?
We post graphs of how many times we 'should have' won v how many times we (obviously) didn't. We and discuss and rant and rave about them at length. We look to our favourite wallow in the mire part of the graph, the EV line to justify our whinging. And we come to the same conclusion as everybody else - we could do nothing about it - and then go on to cry about it a bit more, just coz we can.

I used to use having a rant about it as an excuse so that I could con myself into thinking I was 'Getting it out of my system.' but the fact is it's a delusion and a denial and doesn't work. It lurks in the background and all is rosey until ... and we're back.
It's not just the above either, if we have a nice winrate, it doesn't come from getting the money in the middle and stacking our opponents so much as it's the little orphan pots nobody seems to want, the cbet and get a fold pots, the making correct folds pots, the value betting the right amount pots, those're what build our rate; not the 'I got my AA in and this guy called it off with KK and I held for 100bb ha ha ha ha' stuff.
Soon enough they'll return the favour on that one with QQ v our AK and we'll forget. It will of course give us a nice story about how our AK never hits.

That's a long-winded way of (as coach Jon would most definitely say) grow a pair, move on and use that energy to learn something positive and productive instead.

Anyway, coffee then study, then see if I can win a few euro. If I can't turn this round soon I wont need a positive winrate to get me out of the hole I'll need a bloody JCB.

Goals for the month next, but for now there're 8 days left, time for 40 gazillion more hands yet - if I can avoid stoploss for a change that is!

Run better than me guys and guyettes and make sure it stays fun.

Especially in tournaments, I've found that once I say 'All In' that the outcome really doesn't matter. As long as I got my chips in, in a profitable situation then I'm happy.
For a while I actually stopped looking at the screen/table when I'm all in and just hope that the computer/dealer pushes the chips to me. Thats all I can hope for.
All about mental strength and just being able to go onto the next one, just takes time and experience!

Yes I agree,I have no problem with that stuff either, just move on.

I'm getting hammered in-game and just posting a winning session is a trial. As much as this promotion is great the randomness of plays and multiway nature of it are beginning to tell on me now, so it will be nice to have it done with in a week for me. It's been a rough ride but I think I'm becoming a stronger player for it, even given the nasty run of results.

Got a bad case of toothache right at the back and may not play today, it's affecting me quite a bit and my eyes keep watering, so learning about lop textures instead, interesting stuff. I thought I'd like it, it's very practical.

You people have a nice and painless weekend.

Had to rewrite this because I was whinging, fk that shit. Instead I'll cut it to 'The Lady Variance has kicked my arse for the whole promotion and it finally got to me, poor form on my part. My only excuse is that ... just get a grip, move on.

Hating on players - or donkeys/muppets/suckout merchants/divs, whatever etc lately and that isn't the way to go, neither will it improve our winrate, just a waste of energy that could be used for learning and I'm all for saving energy.. Silly and pointless.

.
Six days left and hardly a winning session in sight, plenty to ponder when it goes like that, but I'm for sure a bit better a player for it. I just wish I could be a better player and win as well!

I know I can win and coach Jon thinks the same, so as long as his confidence in me remains it's just a case of ,

Plug...plug...plug.

Please tell me I earned 50BI in rakeback is all, pretty please?

Keep it fun sane and professional everybody, I'm going to try to win today because I'm told it's more fun.

Ask and thou shall receive, Thanks pokerstars that's a nice little bonus to add to my $2.90!

Now how much did you say the cheapest one was again?




Seems I can only access play money then dammit! It looked good for a while though!

So after Stars trying to wind me up with the play money thing I got to playing and lost; again.

Had a chat with a very nice guy streaming nl100 and he said these range v range things were essential to my poker development. This is similar to the stuff seen in the mighty CrazyCookie's video 4 I mentioned in a previous post.

So here we go, this is my very first real attempt at trying to make sense of range v range as an aide to cbetting. I'll be using the exact same flops shown in the video so I don't confuse myself to start off with.

For simplicity, I'll assume a 2X OR from BU, and SB fold and a BB call.
I'll also assume 100bb stacks and unknown opponents for now, to try keeping ranges 'sensible' and hope it's correct to do that.

I wont be looking at 3bets or how turn cards affect things at this early stage either.


Example 1.

Taking my current ranges of an open first in from the BU:




Then the BB call w(sh)ould look something like this;





Flop 1: Jc2s6h

a) Decide whether BU has a range advantage or not
b) Decide, given the flop texture, is a cbet appropriate or not
c) Write down why I made that decision

I think that's the gist of it but I'll be watching the video again today to make sure I'm not confused and wasting time before I do anything else.

Later.

Edit, I gotz an idea, I'll come back and put up the BB defend without the flatting of JJ+ and AK etc.

Knew I should have waited til I woke up and had food.

Idiot.

This might be a bit more sensible, it'll do for now anyway.

Bb should be defending a lot wider mate!

Got the jist of it OK. I would say more look at villains range. How often is he folding? Is it over 33%? If so you can cbet 50% with ATC and be profitable. If it is less than that you should look to cbet mainly hands with equity or that will pick up equity which often block villains calling range. Eg qt on the jxx board blocks QJ and jt but can also pick up a SD or GS on 30% of turns which we can bet on again as well as to 6% of the time

Thanks for popping in and not laughing at least, very helpful.

Wow, calling a lot wider; ok I'll have to look around and see if I can fix that.

I don't know how often my opponent might be folding though, I have no hud stats on anon, so I think I'll run a filter in PT4 for it if I can work out how, that'll give me a population tendency at least.

I'm hoping that's the right way to go but I'm into guess mode at this level of thinking.

Have you got any ranges you use or did you make them up? If you have some from w34z3l use his, if not try and find his

I say much wider, it wont be loadssss more. V a 2x I try and defend as many suited combos as possible 96s 75s 64s X8o can also be in there.

Yep thank you, I got w34z4l's ranges now and the ones above are for 2.5x, sort of in the middle-ish. I'll use those for now and I can adjust for 2x/3x or whatever when I get more competent - he said, optimistically.

Haven't had time yet to look at Flopzilla but I'll pump the ranges in and watch the vid again to see what all the numbers mean and how to interpret it all. There's a lot going on beneath the surface I think, but I likely wont go into great depth yet, just get a feel for it then delve deeper when I know more about what I'm looking at.
Finding it interesting and my learning has been reinvigorated so I thank CrazyCookie for the wakeup.

Might make a short vid of me playing Blaze later if I get time, lot's of 3bet/4bet stuff going on preflop so it gets hard for an nl10er! My mic is crap though but we'll see.

In other news I had my first winning session in about a week yesterday for around 5BI+ but not entirely sure. Maybe I'm adjusted to the aggro nature of the games at last, all this 3bet/4bet bluff stuff isn't part of my normal table selecting ffs! Probably just a **** on heater though but I'm not allowed to say it anymore or I get my butt kicked and people shout at me and stuff.

Oooo I'm gonna be a monster back in the normal games, I can feel it!


So lots to do and much monies to win, better get on with it then init!

Summary of Blaze at the end of the promo but I'm so embarrassed I'm sweating writing this, fk know what the loss rate is so I'm not even going there.

set over set twice and str over top set is a bit sucky in 5 hands when you work so hard to get back the last 2 suckouts. Just make for a loooong day bro.

Fortunately I know I'm a better player now, partly due to the flop scenarios I'm looking at. Not got there yet but slowly getting it. The thing is when they call your cbet, getting what they call with right is vital obviously but I'm learning that now.

And I have Bordeaux so fk it I'm off for today.

Have a good one all, it's wine - o - clock time.