Grinding break - Need to enjoy the sun!

Dancing in the carribean

How is it going? With me its soso, the grind started out quite well and I did well. Then recently the run bad just hit me like a slap in the face and lost a small sum of 250$ on 25c/50c, then again and today I lost 450$, thats about 1000$ so about 13 buyins. Nothing big but the way I lost it wasnt fun. Guess it happened to thousands of PLO-players so its just to plow through it. Anyways, adding to the misery is the fucking internet, hence why I am writing. I just disconnected for like the 4th time today and even though it works for a long while here I probably have been disconnected while playing 15 times and thats probably 200$ right there. Thats obviously a huge blow but the frustration is worse!!

I still have like 5 days of cardrunners and I am very happy that they allow downloads for people like me that sometimes find myself with poor connections. Streaming here would be a nightmare and its cool to just have to sign in. Anyways, enough about that.

So i have been watching some mindcirkus videos to brush up. To be honest, I think the biggest thing for me is just to make sure to focus a huge percentage of my game, I slack off sometimes and it costs me great. Actually, today when I lost those many buyins (26th june) there were a number of very icky sticky situations and making a video of that would be amazingly helpful because there were a lot of spots where I wasnt sure what to do. So I brought forward my newly bough mic, connected it to my computer, installed camtasia again and then noticed that it doesnt seem to pickup any sound no matter what I do.

So in 2 weeks ive went from 0$ to +2000$ to about +450$ or so, I guess any profit is good right? Lost a couple of hundred in PLO after all and played less FLHE and crushed there. It kinda reminded me that you dont need to play tons of table to make a profit. Maybe it is okay to play very few tables once in a while, the screen just feels a bit incomplete playing like 2x2/4€ FLHE.

Okay so in regards to PLO:

14345 hands played, EV BB/100 = -0,01 but that unfortunatly must be tainted by a site that doesnt show mucked hands. Removing nickname brings it to -7,21 BB/100 ev which kinda sucks. That cool though, there was a lot of coolers but also some bad play.

If we check out the multitable ratio then it averages out at 5,13. 5 tables might be just fine but if we put in like the 10 minutes it takes to get all the tables then I would say I did too many.

Hmm lets do what I always do when trying to motivate myself to play less tables, do some calcs on hourly rates!

After checking out my history, I rake the following

25c/50c EURO - 10,7€ per 100 hands.

25c/50c USD - 11,34$ per 100 hands

10c/25c EURO - 6,32€ per 100 hands.

Colonial look!

I did my calculations in SEK to show what a breakeven player would make per hour depending on stakes and how many hours but i guess it doesnt make any sense for you guys but the yeah the consensus is

1) PLO is just insaaaanely raked at lower stakes, just wow

2) You can make more than most jobs playing 5 tables of breakeven 10c/25c as long as you have a good rakeback deal. Obviously we all strive to maximize our BB/100 and not just RB but it is a nice baseline.

Update.

Yoyo!
Been grinding and shit lately. Just grinding a mixture of FLSH and PLO. Microgaming has been a lot tighter then I remember but then again it is all about what stakes as some people are very stagnant about that, usually a bad idea. So 25c/50c which ive been playing has been pretty bad which kinda sucks. Pokerstars.es continues to be usually good and I run good there too. Today was kinda shitty since I played 1462 hands of PLO, lost 327$ but all in EV was +102. Perhaps there have been too many times where ive kinda lost a little focus and made a lot of borderline plays. Im thinking if I should develope a sort of table-trapping down system where I can play x tables for the first hour then the second hour I do x-2 tables or something and then for session number 2 of the day ill go with 4tabling or whatever. I dunno, we will see about that when we get back to Europe and grind in a more structured way.

Here is a hand I played which was kinda sick. Given my action you guys can probably tell that I have a note that he likes to steal pots when I show weakness. My play could still be bad, it is pretty deep and even though I was right this time, perhaps this was showing me being a bit too gambly. I love the run it twice-function btw but it kinda sucks losing 2 of 2 in a 520 bb pott when you are 70% to win. 9% to lose both, 49% to win both, I guess that isnt too sick.

Poker Stars, $0.25/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Cash, 4 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: $129.76 (259.5 bb)
BB: $124.72 (249.4 bb)
Hero (CO): $170.57 (341.1 bb)
BTN: $36.41 (72.8 bb)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 9 4 K 4
Hero raises to $1.50, BTN folds, SB raises to $5, BB folds, Hero calls $3.50

Flop: ($10.50) K T 9 (2 players)
SB bets $7.47, Hero calls $7.47

Turn: ($25.44) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $23.25, Hero raises to $66, SB raises to $117.29 and is all-in, Hero calls $51.29

River: ($260.02) 7 (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results: $260.02 pot ($1.50 rake)
Final Board: K T 9 8 7
SB showed Q Q 6 A and won $258.52 ($128.76 net)
Hero showed 9 4 K 4 and lost (-$129.76 net)

All and all I have played 12427 hands of PLO since the summer break and isssch, I am a winner ev BB/100 but that doesnt pay the bills, does it?!

FLHE has been going very well, 4603 hands and 5,01 BB/100.

Maybe I should study a bit more PLO and focus on FLHE. The humidity and heat over in the Carribean makes me kinda tired and lose concentration more quickly (no AC btw) and my B-game at PLO is a lot worse than my FLHE-B-game. Ive played 33 hours of poker now for the summer, im gonna continue a bit more this week then ill likely travel around here, do some scuba diving and stuff.

Yoyo from the Carribean!

Yo bloggaru!
I am at the dominican republic and am officially on holiday/grindmode. I did play pretty right away but not that much, just spent the first few days relaxing and catching up on some sleep. It was supersweet to get access to the old pokersites though. I might withdraw more but right now my roll isnt too big to spread out at tons of sites, right now I just have pokerstars.es, svenska spel, ipoker, ongame and microgaming. I guess that is more than what most people have but it shouldnt be. Anyways, I have been hauling ass on pokerstars.es and its easy to focus your attention to sites that go well, even though we all really know that its just a short-term result. The play is however very different but there are still softer games at all international sites with better vip-deals so I should probably stare away from that. If you are winning a lot then bonuses feels extremly secondary but if you hit a bad streak then those extra 5 BB/100 or whatever really makes a difference, I have to step that up.

Ipoker is just a huge nitfest unfortunatly but as always, you can find good tables. Microgaming is a lot looser but it also has occasional nitfests and ongame, I havnt really started that up for some reason. Btw, a recommendation to people to remind themselves playing more networks and also saving time is to download "TheOpener" created by a 2+2er which basically just creates a checklist of software to open and you can select which ones to default so basically you can open 15 pokersites + HM2 + Placemint + camtasia + tableninja or whatever with one click. If you guys dont know what placemint is then you should get that too, it puts tables into slots but the cool thing is that it works with all programs, excel, pokerstars etc while tableninja and similar only works for some sites. Its awesome. I have created some 4tabling setups, 6tabling etc and then for my bigger screen at home I have 9tables and other HU-table setups with 2 active tables and like 15 mini-ones that I sit and wait. Its very nice and its open source.

Anyways, with the limitation of networks and also the success ive had have dictated that i mostly been playing PLO 10c/25c and 25c/50c. 9,3k hands so far and +3,89 BB/100. Nothing to brag about really, I thought it was a lot more but it turns out Ive been crushing on FLHE just playing 2k hands. So Im up like 850USD playwise and perhaps another 600 USD in cashback after a week or so. I consider that a good start!
PS: After writing this I dropped 670$ (-404$ EV) at PLO. Hourly wage has is now around $35 even though the loss which feels good!

I guess im playing a bit unorganized, I have played more tables then I should and mistakes occur more frequently then they should. Here is a hand I butchered so hard, I have no idea wtf im doing on the flop.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 5 players - View hand 2526353
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $163.22
BB: $122.07
UTG: $239.88
CO: $361.24
BTN: $79.46

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with Q Q 4 8
3 folds, Hero raises to $3, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.00) 2 3 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $4, Hero raises to $12, BB raises to $35, Hero calls $23

Turn: ($76.00) J (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $73.25, Hero raises to $125.22 all in, BB calls $10.82 all in

River: ($244.14) 9 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Mofo sits with 8336 btw and I am drawing pretty slim.

So I have a little more than 3 weeks here and I will continue to play pretty chill a few hours per day, then Ill likely not grind that much until I return back to Europe and then I plan to do more organized hours with higher volume and yeah more structured.

Strategy-wise I feel like I need to work on my timings. I do a lot of insta-checks etc and I feel people exploit that. I might go thru some regulars patterns tomorrow to try to spot some patterns and write down some more notes.

EHP preparing for megasummergrind!

Four straight mini-winningdays!

Yoyo!
So school is officially over for a few months. Ohh how ive been waiting! I basically have between 2-3 months of free time and yeah, its gonna be a lot of poker played. Btw, a suggestion for anyone wanting to keep notes, remember stuff etc is OneNote. Evernote is fine but its so much nicer to have more hierarchy. Like all the screenshots and results from last summer I have in a notebook called Poker/Diary_Results and then i have this list of December 2013, Summer 2013 and so. Anyways so I wanted to go back and see last summer.

Last summer I proved to myself that I still doesnt have to get a normal job and I could grind poker. I won a decent amount for a student with an hourly of 30$+ starting basically from scratch at 0.5/1 and 1/2$ fixed limit holdem. There are probably thousands of players that wouldnt classify that as successful and I wouldnt either 5 years ago but I dont have the luxury of putting in large amount of volume anymore, im limited to about 3 months per year of proper grind.

Anyways, in regards of time etc I logged hours on a weekly basis. I did 195 hours which constitutes to 26 full working days if you count 7,5h a proper day. That would be 5,2 weeks if we do 5 days per week. Back then it felt like a decent amount but in retrospect thats kinda chill. I am setting up a schedule with 8,5h poker per day, half PLO and half FLHE and that should make it at least 7h worth of playtime per day. Thats quite a bump from 4,33h/day  that was last summer. I have a lot bet structure now in life so I feel like if I do 6h or whatever then I will be happy.

I feel like going from 26 full working days to 40 days would be realistic and achievable. I also decided on other stuff like what games to play etc. Last summer I lost about 1500$ playing FLHU and while I am pretty damn sure im a winner, the amount of variance and how much it deters focus from other tables etc made me decided that there is not gonna be any HU this summer. I also set a bankroll-requirement for each stake. I took the time to actually print these things on an A3 or 11x17" for americans (not exactly the same size but ok similiar) that I am gonna tape close to my screen as a reminder. I am gonna start on FLHE 2/4$ for about 6k$ profit, then 3/6 until about 9k profit, 5/10 until like 15k profit and absolutely no 10-20 before 20k profit. In regards to PLO then I dunno, gonna play low like 10c/25c and i dunno, we will see how that proceeds. 5tables at 90 hands per hour = 450 hands/hour = 25k hands after 56 hours. I hope to do about 150 hours of PLO so it would be cool do 3 stake changes, 0.15/0.25 to 0.25/0.5 to 0.5/1, its not sexy but it is slow, we all know the ladies like that ;)

Played about 2h per day lately, I recently lost a 200$-pot going all in as a 94,6% favorite so I dunno, even though I havnt really been raking in the dough i feel good. On mondag I will be outside of the land of the free (lol) and thus the grind will really commence. 50/50 PLO and FLHE so we will see how it goes. Made withdrawals and shit so hope to get set up quite quickly with 5-6ish networks and then hoping to expand some to 10ish when the roll grows.