10,000 hands

This morning I finished the 2nd block of 5K hands where the game plan was to play many more hands from the CO and play them aggressively pre flop and knock out the guy on the button so I would “have the button” twice per orbit. These are the stats from the CO during the 5,000 hands I have played. VPIP / 24% / (During the 1st 5,000 hands it was 18%). Opening my game from late position will help me learn how to play marginal hands. PFR / 17% / (11%). This is much better but still too low when I compare it with the VPIP. I should have raised more in order to have position on the whole table. To my defense I made sure to have a tight player to my left so even if I limped behind I was playing most of the hands in position. AF / 2,4 / (1,8) my goal was to get this above 2. I’m very satisfied with this as I think that the lack of aggression has been one of the key leaks in my game. 3-Bet / 2,1% / (1,7). Still too low should be about twice as high. W$WSF / 47% / (44) I played more hands and won a higher percentage of them so I’m on the right track here. Being in position usually helps me to choose the pots I want to play as well as having the advantage of controlling the size of the pot. Steal / 38% / (24) much better. It might be too high but I seldom get 3-bet. If I do get 3-bet from the blinds I can still have the power of position if I have a playable hand. If I get 3-bet by the button, my default play is to fold or when I have the goods I 4- bet him big. Steal Success / 41% / (50) worse, but I still win 41% of the pots uncontested. Cold Call / 7% / (3) Hmmm, higher than before, but my plan was to play many hands in position. I cold called 95 times and won more than $70 from these pots. I used to cold call 30% which can never me profitable unless I play like Phil Ivey. PFR when there is 1 limper in front of me / 7% /(6) FAR TOO LOW, I must learn to punish the limpers! Call when there is 1 limper in front of me / 17% / (20) well, it’s going in the right direction but still on the passive side. I should raise more often. bb/100 / +13 / (26) I think it should be much higher. I still suck at using my position. Conclusions:

1. I have managed too widen my range from the CO I have increased my aggression a little bit to 1,9 overall. But I’m still too passive!!
2. I was able to win more hands from the CO than before in spite of playing many more hands.
3. I still don't punish the limpers!! My 3-bet button doesn’t work!!
4. I only made 3,5 big blinds/100 overall which isn’t even two buy-ins. This is very bad! A good player should make at least 10bb/100 at NL25.
5. I still loose 9bb/100 on the Non-Show-Down-Winning graph. This must be a fundamental systematic leak; unless I get this fixed I will not be able to play at NL50!!!!

Results after 10,000 hands.

• Winnings: $125
• Win rate: +5bb/100
• Bonus: $0
• Bank Roll $625 (started with $500)

Below is a graph of the results after 10K hands:

First 5K Hands Results and Comments

Just finished the first block of 5K hands where the game plan was to play as many hands from the button as possible and trying to outplay my opponents with help of my position. These are all stats from the BTN:

• VPIP / 25% / Probably OK but I think I could raise more often.
• PFR / 13% / Too Low should be about 20%
• AF / 1,4 / Too Low should be above 2
• 3-Bet / 1,6% / Too Low should be at least twice as high
• W$WSF / 44% / Pretty good as there are usually 2 opponents on average
• Steal / 46% / Pretty high but they seldom 3-bet me so if I have a hand I can se the flop in position
• Steal Success / 52% / If it works more than 50% and only get 3-bet about 10% of the times I can still win the pot, I don’t raise with crap unless I have two Nits in the blinds
• Cold Call / 9% / much better than it used to be (30% )
• PFR when tere is 1 limper in front of me / 7% / FAR TOO LOW, I must learn to punish the limpers!
• Call when tere is 1 limper in front of me / 16% / probably good but I should raise more often Flop Raise C-Bet / 20% / I don't know
• bb/100 / +26 / I think it should be higher if I can take advantage of being in position

Conclusions:

• I am still too passive!!
• I don't punish the limpers!!
• I don't 3-Bet!!
• I made 6,5 big blinds/100, overall which is more than 3 Buy Ins. But a good player should make the double on NL25

Any Comments are highly appreciated. Tomorrow I'll start the next block:"Playing much more hands from the CO and play them aggressively, which means knocking out the button and play the hand in position" I must focus on my aggression as well!!! Cheers!

Back to Basic!

We all play poker for a very personal reason, and theses reasons vary much more from one person to another than most of the other games and sports. Poker is not a tennis mach where you just want to win 3 sets over the guy on the other side of the net. Until now I have mostly been chasing as much bonus as possible on all known and unknown sites. During this period I have focused less on learning how to win than avoiding losing as this would counterfeit my goal of collecting the bonus (at least I thought so). This has resulted in a decent amount of winnings for the micro stakes. But the down side of this is that I have adopted a very weak-tight playing style. But instead of winning a few $$ and collecting some bonus after whole evening I asked my self the question. What do I need to do if I want to become a better poker player???

After watching Jason Ho’s SS Foundation videos again I realized I needed short & long term goals. So here they are:

• Beat NL25 FR for 10/bb over the next 100K hands.
• Move up to NL50 FR and make 5bb/10 over the first 100K hands.
• Beat NL50 for 10bb/100 over the following 100K hands.

Well goals are easy to set. But what do I need to do to reach my goals? After talking to Matt Pethybridge I had almost 100 items in my note book. That’s good AND bad because where the hell do I start? I’m not sure but one thing I know for sure is that any plan is better than just fooling around without any plan at all! MY PLAN!

Play 100K hands on NL25

Have 3 different hand charts that go from Nitty – TAG - LAG. Each one of the charts will be played for 30K or 35K hands.

Only play 4 tables and always focus on table selection and look for tables that will suit the things that I want to practice.

Divide my training into 20 different blocks of 5K hands and only have one certain thing to work on.

Make one post at the forums every day.

Always take notes as I play.

Replay the 10 biggest pots from last session before I start a new one.

Reset my HUD in accordance to what I’m practicing.

MY TRAINING BLOCKS!

1. Playing as many hands from the button as possible and trying to outplay my opponents with help of my position.
2. Playing more hands from the CO and play them aggressively, which means knocking out the button. This way I will be able to have the button twice per orbit.
3. Focus on which limpers I can raise with any playable hand from the BTN/CO.
4. Stealing almost every time from BTN and CO and it’s folded to me. If I have a calling station on the button when I’m in the CO I will change tables.
5. Looking for two loose weak victims at the table and trying to play as many hands as possible against them with position.
6. Looking for two weak tight victims at the table and trying to push them off their hands when I have position
7. Start with 1/2 stack and play very aggressive
8. Stealing from the SB, when in the BB. Never let the SB limp in, raise him with what ever crap and adjust to his reaction. If he let me keep my BB and give me his SB it will make a huge difference over 5K hands, not to mention the rest of all hands I will play in the future.
9. Balancing my C-Bets, trying to figure out if C-betting or not, depending on board texture, my hand and his playing style and possible range. My C-Bet% now is far too high
10. Delayed C-Bets. Figure out how my opponents react, will they call with worse hands thinking I missed the flop or will they take a stab at the pot by betting into me on the turn.
11. Double Barreling, who will call the flop and fold to a turn bet and on what board texture?
12. 3-bet lighter in position.
13. Float the PFR and attack on the Turn
14. Raise the Pre flop raiser on the Flop
15. Check raising the Flop as a semi bluff..
16. Find out how to handle a donk bet when I raised pre flop and have position.
17. Turn play, when I have a made hand. How can I set up a plan for getting the whole stack in on the River?
18. River Play, who is bluffing with missed draws, against whom can I induce bluffs, when can I value bet with marginal hands?
19. Defending my blinds against steals, I have to win back at least 50% of the blind money I have to put in the pot, this means the SB stats must be better than (-25bb/100) and the BB (-50bb/100)
20. ???

I’m convinced that it is possible for me to make 10bb/100 at Full Ring NL$50. I am also very aware that it will take a big load of work to achieve it but I will succeed!

Here is my graph for NL25 FR this year before starting this training project: To be continued….

My First Blog

My first Blog, Hello and welcome to my contribution to the “Blog World”. My intention with this blog is to cover what my life brings and offers without limitations, but to start with I will probably cover poker a larger degree than other topics. My on-line poker experiences started about 3 years ago when my neighbor and I was having a drink and he let my play on his account and it was a lot of fun although we lost about $100. The next day I opened an account on Pacific and deposit $20 which I lost in about 30min, I reloaded another $30 and same result. In spite of this little loss I knew that on-line poker could be very profitable because another neighbor had started very early in “Party No-Foldem” days and made a lot of money. I bought a poker book, reloaded my account with another $100 and read a bunch of articles from cardplayer.com to get some basic ideas about the game. During this time I began a bonus hunting trail playing micro stakes LH full-ring and after a while I switched to 6-max and was pretty successful on $0,25/$0,5 and $0,5/$1. Until Aug last year I was not using any tracking software and was only playing on intuition and feeling. I kept my records in a spread sheet and made a little more than $7K where about $3K came from bonuses. In august 2008 I signed up for a Stoxpoker membership and bought the Holdem Mgr software. Reading the forum and watching the videos at Stox became a chock as well as a wake up call. There were so many things I had never heard of or didn’t understand what they ment; squeezing, double barreling, pot control, delayed C-bets, ranges, stealing from the SB, and of course the 2 phrases by Leatherass “Punish the Limpers” and “All-In Baby”. Neither did I know that someone could play +100K hands/month! I read the forums back and forth and printed out a bunch of post which I kept in the bedroom in case my girlfriend would have a headache… There were so many insightful comments on the hands by that I realized that I DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEA AT ALL ABOUT POKER!! All the videos on stoxpoker were all great some greater than others, but not a single bad one IMO. And the less great one were probably the greatest ones and they were above my poker knowledge. Last year ended like the graph below. I was mostly playing NL25 Fr and 6-max on Sun Poker due to a good rake back deal, but when they left cryptologic for iPoker I didn’t follow. In January cashed out my money from all sites and made my first deposit on Poker Stars. I have only played FR NL25 and made about 10 buy-ins on the first 30K hands. In March I got in touch with Matt Pethybridge and he helped me to dig into my HM database and give me a bunch of good tips. You are a very good plumber Matt, Thanks! Two weeks ago I saw a new video (Jedi Mind Tricks) by Jason Ho and remember that he did a few videos for beginners last year. I didn’t like them because I wanted to se some great players play poker and be as good as they are! Anyway I liked the Jedi Mind Tricks Video and went back to watch his old videos and just came to the conclusion that “The Small-Stakes Foundation” WAS THE VIDEOS TO WATCH FOR SOMEONE LIKE ME! Now I know that this was the way to learn the game, step by step and not trying to figure out why “Leatherass” squeezes a certain player with junk at 6-max NL200 when I play against the other donks at NL25 FR. Sorry Dusty, Kyle and the rest of you fabulous players, I will understand more from your videos when I have a solid foundation to lean on to! To be continued