By now, I am playing on some microgaming skins, cuz they are the best atm, if you wanna make your way out of the micros in 2016 imo. Low rake, ok rake back, huge amount of bad regs and ok amount of pure fish. First I wanted to play on Stars, just because I love stars. Software is the best of the best, customer service is nutz. But I just got tired of Zoom, and the benefits from rakeback are a joke there, if your not a high volume 100nl grinder or so.
Regular tables may suck for some of you, but table selection isn't that much of an effort, and I just love the dynamics that will develop between you and other regs.
Due to a PC crash two month ago (now grinding on a seven year old i3, what a pitty), I am very sorry that I cannot deliver old graphs and the 2015/2016 stars graph. Yes you hear that a lot, it just makes me sick as well, but what will you do. I had around 9EVbb/100 on z10nl there over a approx. 50k hand sample. So for now, I just can entertain you with my first 25k hands on MG.
I will do my best, requesting stars to send me my lifetime hands, but I cannot promise, that my old PC will be able to import. I experienced a lot of problems, because HM2 is just draws a lot of resources and then, in the middle of the import, just hangs himself.




I will post some HHs from time to time, which we could discuss if you wantr, but for now, I just want to post some funny ones. Enjoy!

P.S.: Pls notice that some of the hands below weren't played in a "theoretical right" way. The HHs are full of normally wrong bet sizes and so, but when you see something that looks goofy, pls be assured, that it was just an exploit.

well I forgot to mention some of my stats from the hands on MG so far:

27/22/8 VPIP/PFR/3bet
50/55/68 F/T/R cBet
33/53/47 WTSD/W$SD/WWSF


for mor detailed information, feel free to ask

Great thread man! Will follow

Sick post and looks like we have a beast in the mix! Would loveeeeeee to see a lifetime graph that is for sure!

For posting hands smash them up individually Here so all our members and coaches can get involved!

How come you chose PS to be your home? How do the VIP changes effect you?

Sure mate, I wil try my best to re-import my hands and deliver Can't promise, because as I mentioned, my PC is just a pile of shit, but what I can promise is, that I'm gonna buy a new one no later than this summer. Have to grind a bunch first haha.
Well, I was always amazed by stars. It is just such an gorgeous software, and I truly love simple, clear table designs. Plus ist just works fine, there basically are no server downtimes, except the occassionally appearing server restarts. The customer support is the freaking best on this planet. And your funds are super safe.
VIP changes don't affect me that much. I never grinded to go supernova. I tried one year, but I failed hard
Anyways, in 2016 it is important for micro- and smallstakes players, to receive good rakeback and to have the privilege to play against the worst players. Two facts, which stars can't satisfy me with no more. A good midstakes grinder once said: "If you wanna make any profits in poker, you have to deinstall PokerStars first!", which is kinda true, I guess. So for now I'm grinding on microgaming as I said before. Imo this is the best choice atm for any smallballer out there. Good software, good support, safe funds, plenty of bad regs and fish and a good amount of rakeback.

My session yesterday went from bad too good lol. Was down around 5 stacks, they just kept hitting and hitting :-/ Plus there were some bad setups. Don't get me wong. Imo it is VERY important, that when you review your sessions, you have to spend attention to those "setup" spots. Because sometimes they were no etups, just spew.
Example: okay-ish reg opens UTG, MP reg 3bets and you have AK in the small blind. On micro stakes you have almost never a value 4bet there, UTG ranges are kinda tight, around 13% (which is bad of course but whatever), 3bet ranges against UTG are normally KK+ plus very little bluffs (small suited Ax from time to time, but some just go for value there). So we have to deviate from GTO and exploit that, by only 4betting KK+ there. This is highly exploitable vice versa, but none ever will. Coldcalling 3bets OOP is not an option ever, just DON'T So for me it is perfectly fine to fold AK and QQ there. Things change obv, when initial raiser sits in CO seat and gets 3bet by the BTN. Then we obv want to 4b a bunch.
I hope that makes sense
Anyways, yesterday I became a little desperate, because I was carddead for so long and it seemed like I miss every single flop. So the described spot came up and I went for 4b/jam with AK there, Villain showed AA, obv is obv^^ I made a little break then and was very angy with myself for spewing a stack just like this. It just kills your winrate so much. And this is just another mistake too many microgrinders make, they spew in the wrong spots.
For me it comes all together in this:

- Make a solid preflop gameplan (Snowie can help you with this, it is even for free!)

- Categorize some Flop textures (I did 12, you cann go more or less, but around 12 should be perfect)

- Put the ranges in equilab. Look which ranges hit which flops good, and which do not. Play bad flops, that hit villains range more than yours passively, especially OOP. Before betting, think of the turn and river. Will I have the best hand a lot of the time by the river? Go big and bet bet bet then. The board is very dynamic, you will often don't have the best hand by the river? Look for a cheap showdown! Check-calling Top Pairs on the Turn IS an option, believe me!

- Don't tilt. DO NOT. Just... don't

- Don't spew. Same as it is for tilt. Just don't. Tight laydowns don't make you a pussy. They make you going up the stakes. They make you $$$.

- Look for Rakeback. Poker 2016 is tuff. Yes this is legit, even for the micros. Rake is high. 10bb/100 Rake can make a good grinder a BE player. Low Rake + good Rakeback make you become a solid winner.

- Get a coach. Look for guys who are activly grinding. When you play 10nl it is perfect to find someone who plays 100nl+ and who is willing to teach you for around 50-70 bucks an hour. This sounds a lot, but it will be the best investment you ever make, can promise that too!

- Do off-table work. Analyze. Review. Record your sessions and review with other players. What would they do different? Could this be any good?

- Table selection. NEVER join a table with 5 other regs. There is one little exception. Play only one table with 5 other regs once a week or so. Look what they do. Check their ranges, betsizes and so on. What do they wrong, what do you do better? This is imo important, because it is very useful to know the pool leaks. You can exploit them in the future. But otherwise just look for a table with at least one big fish or two very bad regs. Look to get position on them. Quit the table when they're broke.

- No cash outs. At least none, when your grinding it up. When you made your way up to the limit you want to stay and make some money, which probably is 50nl or 100nl for a parttime player, then go for it. But not earlier.


So when you follow these advices, I am pretty sure everyone is able to beat micro- and smallstakes poker in 2016. It has become a lot of work, that is true. Just "clicking buttons and using a chart" times are gone. They don't come back. So develop as a player and you will still be able to make some money. Sounds easy, I know. But it is a lot of work. I will try to do my best

kept losing today, reviewed now for 1 1/2 hrs, everything seems fine. just std downswing and 7 stacks in ~2,5k hands are obv nothing so no worries. my roll is ~800€ now, I'm waiting for the money from the 55k race and then will clear the bonus in the next 5k hands or so. then I will move up for sure, no sense in grinding overrolled at 10nl when there is more money to make at 20nl+

could win back 3 stacks in my nightly session, tables were awesome, but I'm still running like aids haha It just seems like I just can't win in any restealed pot. Just one of that "I have AdKd, 3bet in the SB vs BTN and flop is 8h9hTs" swings^^ Super annoying but you just have to stay disciplined and go for the x/f evvery time. There simply is nothing you can do about, you don't influence the cards that fall so stay calm and grind

On the rakeback topic we can obv help a ton with that and we are the market leaders in it!

The main pull to our deals is our Top 500 $50k private rake race which you can view Here. You can gain anywhere from 15-35% in returns from this.

For 100nl if you are not bothered about zoom type games I would say Stan James is your best bet

- 30% Rake back
- 1250 deposit bonus (works off at 20%)
- 2 * $5k SJ races
- Our $55k race
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You can take a look at the deal and create an account Here

I made an account on both, BetVictor and StanJames, which are obv tracked over PokerVIP Atm I'm grinding it still up, but the goal is obv to reach 100nl

those just happened all at the same table in the last 2 orbits before blinding out. just my luck I guess^^













They have it, I have it too, but they got better. I have it, the fold. So annoying

another problem is, that HEM2 seems to fuck it up a lot. Yesterday and the day before, it didn't import any hands. I tried to do it by myself, but the gamehistory.dat seems messed up. Well, today everything seems to work just fine... Hope I get the other hands imported. Gonna play some good old games now (addicted to AC 1 atm, it is just so damn good, omfg) and put another session on later.

Awesome journey man! Not sure if I read or just skipped over what you're doing for work now? Your mindset looks dope so defo one to follow!

How do you suggest using Snowie? I end just playing the software and not really learning much.... Lol. How do you use it to study?

Hey man, thanks for joining my blog

atm I'm living from a thing called "BAföG" we have here in Germany. Some students are allowed to get money from the government, which has to be paid back partly later. Don't get me wrong, this has nothing to do with welfare or with me being some kind of freeloader haha. You get it when your parents don't earn enough to support you. Apart from this I made some reserve assets over the years. I hope I can quit this BAföG thing soon and play poker as my main income again. I am planning to work as a shift worker in a local print shop from May on too. I don't like to have a lot of debts later, which I have to pay back over a long period then.

Well, first I looked at its opening ranges and compared them with my own. They were intriguing similar, Snowie likes to open some more unsuited broadway cards in early position, I like to have some more suited connectors, both is fine in theory, but in practice, suited connectors play a little better.
From there I checked what Snowie wants to cold call, 3bet, 4bet or flat. There our ranges distinguished a lot. I made some horrible cold calls as a standard in the past, which basically were 3bets. To understand why snowie is doing this, I simply put some specific hands I was playing wrong all the time into equilab, calculated the equity against a specific range and then just calculated the EVs of both plays. Needless to say that 3bet was maxEV everytime.

Then I just inserted my 12 flop categories I mentioned above. There is a video on pokerstrategy, were member "AlderFalder", who is a total sicko (plays up to 10knl on stars, was one of the top winners in z500 pool over years) did that work for us. I looked then which ranges hit which flops better/worse. You can say as a rule of thumb, when you have a good equity advantage, which starts at let's say+5% equity, you should bet and raise more then check or call, vice versa it is for villain ofc.
Furthermore I then just put in some situations that appear the most, for example we 3bet in SB with a linear range against BTN open, villain calls and Flop is xxx. What should we do with specific hand yy? This is obv a lot of work, but you become quicker and better over the time. Here my biggest "aha moment" was, when I realized, that there is a lot of difference between "an A hi Flop" and "an A hi Flop" lol. For example, your range advantage starts to shift a bunch between AsTs6d and Ah7d2c. Sounds trivial, I know. But I made the mistake to just say "ok A hi Flop is good for us, so we should bet a lot". Ofc we should bet less on the first one.
I think this helped me the most, to simply know my range better. You have do be cautios, because Snowie obv just played against itself over years and not against a human being. People aren't machines and obv peolpe won't make GTO decisions (at least 99,999% I guess ) so at the tables there are a lot of things that are more +EV or max EV that Snowie would never do in this situation (keyword exploitative moves). And Snowie just knows 3 bet sizes as well (half pot, pot and two times the pot). But when you know, what play would be GTO, it gets more easy for you, to understand when and why to deviate from a specific play. And this just helps you to overcome tilt periods, because when you know you can't do better, and you understand, that you are just running bad, you won't tilt, because obv we all know we can't influence the cards that are falling, right?
Simply playing against Snowie is a good thing to do as well. You can then review your session and Snowie advices you, where you could have done better. Again, always keep in mind that Snowie is a machine.
One of the greatest benefits you can get from Snowie, is the bluffs/bluff catchers thing. This was one of my greatest leaks and esspecially one that led to tilt the most too. So often I was there on the river, villain shoved and I felt sick to my stomach: "Hm, should I call? Should I fold?". Working with Snowie helps you to improve a lot there. I learned, that a good bluff catcher has to a) block villains value range and b) unblock his bluffing range. Furthermore, just because A hi beats some of villains bluffs in a particular situation, it can be a leak to just call all of them, because then you are defo calling too much. It is hard for me to explain in english haha, but I hope you understand what I mean. For bluffs it is the other way around. You should block villains calling, but not villains folding range. This sounds trivial too, but it helped me a lot to understand, why it is better to turn pairs into a bluff than bluffing busted draws for example. Just saying "well, I have a lot of sets there, so I shoud bluff some busted draws too, to keep balanced" is BS tbh. That is what you call "pseudo-GTO" I guess Another benefit then was, that I was able to optimize my bet sizings and betting frequencies especially on the river. Maybe you already read about this "1 - alpha" term, which helps you to keep villains bluff catchers, or other way around villains bluffs indifferent. So it is regardless what hero or villain is doing in a specific river situation, the EV of our or his move always is zero. This obv appears only approximated in practice, but it gives you once more a good understanding of ranges and when to do what.
Gosh I am writing a wall haha. But this is just because there is so much to tell about this topic. I hope I don't bore you to death. I have to mention, that I am still at the absolute beginning of what Snowie can do for you and I am still a total noob when it comes to GTO too. But it is just so unbelievable interesting for me, to learn more and more about poker everyday. To review situations over and over, which were supposed to be totally clear in the past, and then finding new things, which are quite better... that is what fascinates me the most and what helps me to keep focussed.


Edit: I woudln't play 10nl if I was able to use all this information in-game obv. Thats stuff sounds good a lot in theory, but in practice it is obv very hard to use. I make shitloads of mistakes while playing. Just wanted to mention that too, cuz after reading what I wrote, I felt it may sound a little cocky.

srry about this QQ hand ,guy is a solid nit and now A4s
LOL

yes I know he is a nit. I never ever saw him openraising small suited Aces there haha and nits hate folding AA/KK with a diamond there so I decided xr ott was best. But even against my assumed range getting it in ott is not the best play. Still +EV, but not max EV.
But this just shows what I said before: People are no machines and people will do random stuff from time to time

just another bad day at the office
lost some flips, won one or so. lost some std set ups. was betting bit to thin on turn and river against fish. but apart from that poker feels good. can't complain much though.

I didn't play today. Buddy came back from a one week Amsterdam trip and brought the best fkn weed ever I hope one is allowed to talk about such things here, if not, I will edit my post instantly!
So after being high for about 6 hr or so, I decided to take nap, which was held for another 4 hr, and I just woke up haha. I'm gonna have a little midnight snack now, smoke one more, and got to bed again. Life is so good right now haha

Could win some today, which is good on first sight, but on second sight I played not good. Got lucky several times, made bad decisions... I can say I am not proud of myself. In the middle of the session I than focussed some more, played better and won some more. By the end, I lost some back, tables got pretty reggish, cuz all the fish were busto and I decided to quit for today. Gonna have some food now and watch the super bowl. I am a big american sports fan, love basketball and football, watch some baseball and icehockey as well. This years bowl I am not excited that much, I just don't like neither the Panthers, nor the Broncos, but for tonight I am on the Panthers side. So go Panthers

Some Hands

#1 Villain is BTN 4b vs resteal 21% and 9% Range, so defo one to target with some light bluff shoves. Dunno what he is thinking there, but whatever^^




#2 Villain is somehow okay-ish, think one of the better regs for sure. I have no clue what he is doing here; if he even realises that he plays in the CO seat effectively or what... Flatting QQ COvsBB is just bad, we have not much history or so, so theoretically he shoud just look to 4b/get it in, anyways, postflop I didn't calculate if he has a value shove on the river there, but it feels like one for sure.
On the other hand I am not sure if I should bet the turn, feels like a check against his floats, he could have 77-JJ, 87s, which will call a bet obv, but I just can't value bet against. So I guess it is good there to bet Flop, xc Turn and either bet the River if Turn went xx or x/f if he shoves, obv not on this one




#3 Fun Hand, dunno what he is doing there But River regulates lol

Not sure I ever use AJ as a 5b bluff hand, much prefer a hand like A5s or 66/77 and increase our value range to AQs.

TT I would just triple off v anyone at 10nl and 100% not shoving facing a 3bet with boninfor if villain does that.

Last hand is lol