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.

Ivey poker, Hawaii and preparing for the summer, grinding in Mexico/Dominican republic

Whatsup guys? Someone asked me to post some pictures from my recent vacation in Hawaii, okay!

So in regards to poker then I played only 7700 hands last month. I lost $500. Gonna continue to try to complete more work in time so I can have my evenings and weekends totally off for a private life, and of course, poker.

Now it is the start of the new quarter. I missed a lot due to 2 trips so I am catching up. So far it seems like the work load is not overbearing but we will see how it continues. This month I am also gonna skip alcohol and meat until 13th of may. I hope this will let me train down to a 7hour sleep schedule (hangovers always made me oversleep). This diet has been running 3 days now and if you work out a lot as I do, the protein-thing is a big issue. Sure thing tofu, lentils and beans has a somewhat high percentage of protein but it is still 1/3 of any type of meat. So if you eat 200g of chicken then obv you have to eat 600g of lentils and that is basically a plate full of lentils! So I do protein shakes. If you are like a typical vegan, very skinny and do not need a lot of food then it would work a lot better.

Enough about diet! So yeah, I hope to play 5+5 hours of poker every saturday and monday from now on. I was hoping to learn a lot from ivey poker but unfortunatly their service more or less suck. It is obvious that they cater more towards a beginning, starstruck audience then actually intending to provide content for players to become good. Both Ivey and Antonius dumb down their conversation and doesnt seem to want to reveal much more than the basics. The amount of PLO-videos is unfrtounatly more or less non-existant. I am very disapointed, do not pay to be a member there right now.

One thing I COULD do though is set up the schedule for the summer in terms of location and the amount of hours. Last summer I spent 194 hours according to HM2 which averaged out to like 5 hours per day if you count 5 days per week grinding. That is kinda low I believe and I made some new calculations for this one and I will have 11-15 weeks vacation depending on where I will study. If I bump it up to 7h grind per workday for 10 weeks then I will have 350 hours which is 80% more than last summer. I am gonna plan on half PLO and half FLHE and perhaps if I run good in PLO, it will be almost entirely PLO. Profit is most important and I quickly want to earn at least 8000$ and I decided that if I dont do that, I will "punish" myself by not drinking alcohol for 2 months and not buying anything except food for an entire year.

I have 26 days inbetween flying back to Europe and the original idea was that I am gonna travel around the states but now I realize that it would be more awesome to go Mexico or perhaps the Domincan republic because then I can also grind.

As you hear, I am very eager to start playing again, perhaps more than ever.

Off to hawaii - 4 days - 4921 hands PLO

Yo! Final day is over and unfortunatly it didnt go splendid. All in all during these day I played 4921 hands PLO and won 121$ at a WR of 11,5 ptBB/100. It felt a little shitty with the last day -200ish but you cannot really wish for any higher WR than that. Last day also featured more interesting hands.

This day I was trying to take copious notes on the regs, mainly regarding betsizing. I should probably dwell more into the notecaddy-notes but the amount of info can sometimes overwhelm you and you think like "Ill get into that later". 

Im trying to not complicate thought processes way too much vs bad players but obv try to think somewhat balanced vs regs. So in this case, I was trying to figure out what my turnline would be depending on the card. With the given card the fold is easy but perhaps I should change stuff. So after a 4bet I tend to bet 1/3ish or perhaps sometimes 1/2pot. I probably CB too frequently btw. So here I go for a slighly small CB and he calls. On turn I kinda give off a lot of weakness but then again, this turn is not great in regards to his callings range I feel (good for him). 

When he calls, I would discount like 75% of all Q9x-combos and Q6xx combos. I could be very wrong but I feel that he would shove any 96xx. That leaves flushdraws and semi-wrap + pair combos. With that I think its a fold vs any 9-K on turn. Check/folding is superior to any type of bet IMO. But how about the action on the other cards? Checkcalling would perhaps induce bluffs/semibluffs and sometimes it goes check check and I can evaluate if i want to valuebet on the river. Do people agree?

Hero (MP): $394.63 (197.3 bb)

CO: $664.35 (332.2 bb)

BTN: $400 (200 bb)

SB: $1,205 (602.5 bb)

BB: $144.76 (72.4 bb)



Preflop: Hero is MP with A A J 7

Hero raises to $6, CO raises to $17.25, BTN calls $17.25, 2 folds, Hero raises to $72, CO folds, BTN calls $54.75



Flop: ($164.25) 6 9 Q (2 players)

Hero bets $61, BTN calls $61



Turn: ($286.25) J (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $267 and is all-in, Hero folds



Results: $286.25 pot ($7.15 rake)

Final Board: 6 9 Q J 

Hero mucked A A J 7 and lost (-$133 net)

BTN mucked and won $279.10 ($146.10 net)

Here is a biiiig hand I lost and I obv felt kinda retarded. I do think though that I couldnt have done very much about it given how he had played. So he was 70/50/4.7 and going to SD a lot. The sizing for me waaas screaming blockerace but what is peoples experience regarding this? My hunches can be way off. If this would have been any less aggresive or loose, this would have been a fold for me.

Boss, $1/$2 Pot Limit Omaha Cash, 4 Players

Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. 



BB: $513.47 (256.7 bb)

CO: $400 (200 bb)

BTN: $276.77 (138.4 bb)

Hero (SB): $836.76 (418.4 bb)



Preflop: Hero is SB with 7 Q 8 9

CO raises to $7, BTN raises to $12, Hero calls $11, BB calls $10, CO calls $5



Flop: ($48) 7 K 5 (4 players)

Hero checks, BB bets $48, 2 folds, Hero calls $48



Turn: ($144) T (2 players)

Hero checks, BB bets $144, Hero calls $144



River: ($432) 8 (2 players)

Hero checks, BB bets $309.47 and is all-in, Hero calls $309.47



Results: $1,050.94 pot ($15 rake)

Final Board: 7 K 5 T 8 

BB showed 4 J A 4 and won $1,035.94 ($522.47 net)

Hero mucked 7 Q 8 9 and lost (-$513.47 net)