All the good things have come to an end...

after 11 positiv sessions in a row my heater endet and I found myself in the red.

105 minutes, 550 hands, -42BB/100. Red was ok, slightly negative, but blue was disastrous. What happened:

actually nothing. I lost a big hand against an aggrofish. He bullied the table for quite a while and I thought i had the perfect bluffcatch. unfortunatly he was better. The rest was just variance I guess. AA got cracked by T7 in a middlish pot. 1 or 2 hands did not get there... was dominated quite often (KQ on AK,...) just not my session.

positive is that I did not freak out, even after some very unfortunate situations. As my red stayed OK i also did not get too passive. Looking for my hand distribution i found out that from AQ+ and QQ+ only AA was dealt above expectation (which means 3 times) so no good hands, no good action

2nd horrorsession in an row

150 min, 766 hands -30BB/100

once again, nothing i can do.

only positive that I can take from the day: mental game is strong. I cannot influence the cards, so I played well, got it in good, but sometimes it all goes to shit.

1st session: red stable blue catastrophy, 2nd sessio blue 0 red catastrophy... I tried some bluffs, but they did not go through and had no strong hands to apply pressure. I never had the hand to call down anything so had to fold a lot...

tomorrow is another day and i will come back stronger

seems i lost my mojo

session was not a katastrophy but about half a buy in negative...

mistakes were made, well... lets hope next week will be better!

Monday afternoon session.

I am back on track. I think this was very important for my mental game as i hade to fokus more than usual to get into my pokermindset before i started.

facts:
106 minutes; 584 hands; 46,32BB/100... Blue to red about 10:1

I think today I had my first suckout since I play on Bet365. Villain goes AI on a 4 spade board on the turn. I have 2 pair. As i was up alot at this point, invested already alot of money and got about 6:1 i decidet to gamble. After analyzing the hand I guess on the long run against this player type this is somewhat close. Against a nit player it is definitly a losing line, but he was rather agressive and bluffed alot. He had the As but i made my full house on the river

my bluffgame did not work very well this time. I dont mean small semibluff on flop or turn. I mean bigger ones on the river. In hindsight one effort was really bad but i think 2 were ok... unfortunatly i got called down in all occasions.

It is very good to be back on the winning side and hope that i find time to start a 2nd session in the evening.

Evening session sucked

3 hours, 750 hands, -18,14BB/100

I started actually quite good but half into the session I did not play particularly good anddid not run good. red is at -250 BB... I am not happy about the way that the day and the session ended but I guess I am just too tired to play my agame..

WOW do I get tested in my patience at the moment

This session was probably the worst thing that I ever experienced in poker. I really worked hard. I played well. I stayed concentrated but hand after hand after hand i get wrecked.

AA cracked (again... I run below 6 Buy Ins with my AA)... flopped full house - cracked...

The only positiv thing that i can take from this session is that I stopped when i felt that it was too much to take...

Other than that i think I really played well.

I was a winning player for about 3 weeks, now for about 1 week I get wrecked... I know about variance, but is there a possibility to check if I really played well during my upswing or that I was just running hot.. some stat analysis? some kind of luckometer?

wow poker sucks atm

I am still pretty sure that its not really my fault. I get called when i bluff and get wrecked when i have something...

only 1 winning session in my last 7 efforts.... this time i played for 1.5 hours, 614 hands, -33BB/100

confidence is gone... completly... my red line sucks but I dont know how to improve atm... when i cbet i get called when i dont they river their low pair and my Ahigh loses...This sucks big time...

over all i played 26k hands at 2,25BB/100... this is really really bad... I know that the playerpool is sooo weak but i cannot benefit from this... I have to run good obviously because otherwise i cannot play profitably...

... god i am frustrated right now...

Have you been reviewing your sessions?

My advice for today, or instead of your next session, spend the time going over ALL your hands from the last session or 2. Literally, reload every hand and "play" them again (say what you "should" be doing in each situation and then see what you actually did), you might be surprised and will look at them in a different light. Playing when frustrated will not do you any favours #TiltDoesn'tWin.


Watch some videos on here for the stakes / site you're playing on.

Without seeing the hands it's hard but I would guess from my own experience is that you may be betting others out of hands when you have it too often, defending too wide, making mistakes with bet sizing, and you will realise this when you review the hands and look at them objectively.

Good luck!

Oh and I wouldn't worry about your red and blue line at the minute, just unclick that box

Thanks @AshVIP, its nice to see that some one is following my story.

I took your advice and stayed away from playing today and analyzed my hands. In the last 5 days I had 4 really bad sessions, 2 slightly negativ and 1 positiv.

findings:
-) 2 key streets where I have problems: a) flop
b) river

on the flop I did not cbet enough
on the flop i did not check raise enough

on the river i value owned me alot. I find this interesting because during my upswing I got payed alot by my fellow fish... during the last few sessions I run into 2p+ alot of the time.

At the moment I tend to overvalue my 1 pair hands...

lots to learn and lots to improve

You'll find most blogs get LOTS of readers (you can see from the "views" count), but not many actually comment so be assured it's not going unread, and keep doing what you're doing!




Good to hear! Studying and looking at your own game is sooo important and most players just don't do it, which is why 95% of players don't progress in the game. To move forward in anything, you have to identify your weaknesses, work on them, and improve.

Check raising river is a good move, most fish will call with weak hands, especially if you make it a good price so they feel they have to call.

Looking forward to seeing your next update, and that it will be a positive one!

well... I dont know... maybe i should take some days off...

I tried to apply what I found out yesterday... only to get wrecked again

of course my AA got cracked... what else should i expect.... and AQ against an aggrofish A8 has no chance (he flopped 4 of a kind)... what else can i say...
running below EV is my biggest hobby... getting outflopped is my speciality... running into the nuts when I change gears and play agressivly is what i do...

cu some time next week... right now i need some time off

I'm assuming you use tracking software?

COuld be helpful to post your stats and we can see what leaks we can identify or whether it is just runbad

Sunday afternoon session

oh my god i needed this session




Of course I got into some good spots. But some of the success i attribute to my intense study of my bad sessions. Yes I did run bad. But that is only part of the picture. My main problem in the last couple of sessions was (and was probably my main problem over all) that i tend to overvalue my 1pair hands. I lost lots of pots because of this.

I managed to stay disciplined and only called down or 3barreled when I had a read or a favourable board.

Special thanks to @AshVIP for your support. I was very frustrated and your help was very very much appreciated.

I am off for the weekend and will maybe do some studying but deffinitley no playing.

back in the doghouse...

bit more than 2 hours, 675 hands, -40BB/100

actually there were 4 significant hands in this session

I posted 1 in the HH review section.
1 hero call against good villain worked
1 hero call against same villain did not work
trip-kings lost against flush

adittionally over about 100 hands I was completly card-dead... i lost about 5€ in non show down. just little steps... like every hand i saw a flop i had to give up.

rest was quite OK i guess. lack of agression is obvious but other than that it was ok

before I got tilted i stopped. i planned to play longer.

My biggest problem is definitly the lack of agression. Has anyone a tip for a good book or video series on agressive play (especially for the micros)? Also something regarding agressiv mindset would be very appreciated

Can't say I have a vid to recommend, but will offer this. If you are anything like me, I find that my aggression wanes in spots or situations that I have not been in very often, where I don't really know what to do, where I am unsure of what is the best play. I used to be quite passive, but as I studied more and did more theory and, probably most importantly, as I started to understand how ranges interact postflop, I found that my aggression started to increase. Its almost like because I understand a spot or a given situation I have more confidence. Also the more I played and the more I got myself into situations or tried something new that I learned, the easier it got, to do that thing. A simple example might be using Axs as a 4bet bluff. Now typically at the micros you don't need to do much 4b bluffing, but the games are changing. There is so much info available to new players now that even at the smallest of micro stakes, you have some very competent players and very aggressive players. I used to never 4b bluff cuz I just felt I didn't need to do it. I would have guys that were obviously 3betting super light against me. I could see it but wouldn't do it. When I first started doing it it felt foreign to me. I hated it, but it started working. Now that I have done it thousands of times, its just like no big deal. If i think they are 3betting light, 4b bluff incoming. The more I did it and the more it worked and the more math I did on those spots to see that it is +EV the better I felt about it, the easier it became.

I think the other thing is, that you want to be aggressive but it has to be calculated aggression and it has to be +EV. Don't just be aggressive for the sake of being aggressive. Like if you are looking at that Aggression % or Aggression factor stat on your HM2 and think its low, don't worry about it. I think that stat was designed at a time when people were way more fit or fold. You could just cbet flop almost 100% of the time and just take it down. Even at micros now people are a lot more competent and have very solid pre and post flop ranges, so its just not that easy to just cbet bluff and take it down.

You want to be making the highest EV decision in every play and there are a lot of situations in today's games that checking is clearly best and that could be with a myriad of holdings. You really need to start looking at the various flops and figuring out your ranges from various spots. So take BBvBU range and figure out what a betting range is, checking range, XR, XF, delay, bet vs skip etc. If you don't know how just try and figure it out, then post some stuff on here and try and get feedback. Also posting the HH and asking questions so you can figure out what the "standard" plays are or what others would do in those spots and get those down so you can start to focus on more advanced plays. I just don't think you can watch a vid on how to be more aggressive and just go out and start being more aggressive. You still need to have the theory behind it to know when being aggressive is higher EV. So like if you want to be cbet, double barrel, or triple barrel bluff more, it still boils down to whether or not you are going to get enough folds to make your bluff profitable and that changes from board to board and player to player. Again you need to know what hands people are continuing with and what hands they are folding in a vaccum, then based on your HUD stats and table reads you can make adjustments based on how tight or loose you feel players are that you are up against.

If you can afford it, getting some coaching might help to get you started with some of the theory or trying to join a group, like a coaching for profits or even just a study group on skype or text. You are in the right place here and doing this journey is certainly going to be +EV

@fawltyfelix WOW thank you so much for taking the time and writing this text.

I base my agression problem on the fact, that my non-showdown-losses cancel out my showdown winnings. I do not want to blindly bet bet bet whenever a situation occurs. So i suffer from not being able to stab the right pots.

At the moment poker the mental part of poker feels for me like learning to surf. Once you have overcome the struggle to get ON the wave surfing it self is not uber difficult. When I sit at the tables I feel exactly the same. In some sessions I just cant get on the board but end always under water...

At the moment I am playing at the lowest possible stakes. I do not want to invest in coaching until i am at least at NL25. Until then i have to learn the basics... learn how to analyze my sessions, learn from books and videos.

@fawltyfelix you mentioned that theory behind my moves is important to play agressivly +EV --> Thats exactly what I am asking for... are there any theorybooks out there that help me to improbe my postflop play?

I analyzed yesterdays session. Actually there is nothing new to what i wrote yesterday. I missed a couple of CBet and double-barrel spots but over all i played fine. When you lose 3 out of 4 big hands it is just hard to have a profitable session.

Today went very nice. I was surfing

exactly 2 hours, 542 Hands, +45BB/100

over all:29k Hands, 2,86BB/100 plus.

I want to improve these stats to about 7BB/100. After achieving this I want to step up to NL10

No Problem. The only book I can think of off the top of my head is Applications of No Limit Holdem.by Matt Janda. I think he just came out with a new one as well. I might actually have it downloaded as a pdf or something. It is a bit older now and I wouldn't pay much attention to the preflop stuff as preflop play has changed a bit. It basically teaches you all the math behind minimum defense frequencies and balancing betting for value versus bluffs to make bluffcatchers indifferent, etc. Its not perfect but it will give you some basics about how to get started with that. It is pretty heady and can get really math intense, so if you aren't in to that it will be a complete snoozefest.

I think there were some videos on here by a guy named crazy cookie or something where he uses some different programs like flopzilla and combonator to do some of that stuff as well. You can also look at solvers, but the challenge with that is they are super expensive to be able to analyze flop play and require a fair amount of computing power. You can download them and do turn and river play for free, but have to know what people would be getting to the turn and river with.

Again, a lot of that stuff is going to give you a baseline balanced strategy assuming you were playing against a competent opponent who was playing that kind of strategy, so you then need to figure out exploits and adjustments based on the people you are playing. All of this helped me a ton with flop play, it was fairly eye opening for me, however, I also had a coaching group and still do, so I learned a lot from them.

Lastly, and I think Ash mentioned this already, at the smallest of microstakes, i don't think you need to be all that concerned with your redline. I think most winning graphs of 2nl and 4nl that you will see, the blue line and redline will make a big huge sideways V on the screen. The redline going down and the blueline going up and typically the blue line just goes up more than the redline so your overall winrate is positive. Most people at your stakes just aren't going to understand ranges and MDFs and equities and they just play how they play and if you have a fit or fold player you can just cbet bluff a ton and if you have a calling station you don't waste your time bluffing you just bet huge when you have it and get max value. Based on some of the hands I have seen of yours I know you know this already as I have seen you go for some big value in spots. Not that you want to disregard the redling totally and not be bluffing at all, but just don't focus on it so much that you are forcing bluffs or going for thin value in spots that don't warrant it. You could be calling down too light as well, if your blue line isn't vastly better than your redline. Some of that is just getting to know your customer at micros and understanding that the vast majority just aren't bluffing all that often on turns and rivers, especially if they are raising.

I think you are looking at this the right way and doing some good things to progress. Just have some patience and stick with it. Keep doing what you are doing and trying to learn and get better. It took me a while to get where I am now and I still have so much more to work on and do. I mean I only play 10-20nl so not like i am miles ahead or anything. The guys I know playing small to mid stakes put in hours of off table work and grind for hours and hours so it just takes time and dedication.

@fawltyfelix thanks again.

Afternoon session...
2 hours, 585 hands, -40BB/100
well 3€ below EV

biggest pot is in the hand review forum

red was stable, blue very bad mostly because of the last hand.

Mentally i am OK. I just did not run into good spots alot.

I will work on my play in the next days... the more i think about it the last call was just stupid

ATM poker sucks...

bit more than 2h. 718 hands, -25BB/100 in todays evening session

I study alot. I try to apply everything that i learn. But as easy as poker seems when you hit your cards as devestating it gets when you do not. Red was abysmal. Blue too because my bluffs got called down.

Over All results down to +1,3BB/100
last 5500 hands: -15BB/100

This really really bugs me.

For tomorrow I will analyze my winning periode again and try to find out what i made better.