Week 5 finally

After a long break because of the technical issues and because of the holidays i finally returned to the game.

I made some changes on my play: I now play on Full Tilt. 5 NL rush poker. 6 max tables.

The most important change is that i now play 2 tables at once of rush poker. It’s been very hard to try to focus and play like that. I plan to play only 2 tables for now and gradually increase to 3 in February and 4 in March.

The main objective is to reach 40 K hands per month and of course to be on profit 🙂

The secondary objective is to reach Silver Edge by the end of February on the site which means an average or 35 FTP per day on a 30 days period (this will bring me a rake back of 1$ per 100 FTP).

The results aren’t very good, but tacking in account the absence i expect to do better next week:

Bankroll: 210.71-11.75=198.96 (almost 40 buy ins).

Hours played: 14 (i expect to reach 20 next week)

Hands played: 5556 (the plan is to reach 10 K per week, we will see. I prefer to play more concentrated on quality then on the volume)

Regarding the study, i watched some videos on http://www.deucescracked.com but the tactics there are mostly for higher limits, and here i have to concentrate more on preflop play and postflop play from good positions. I have to restrict more my opening range and to go more easy with the 3bet. Regarding the 4bet at this limit i don’t think that you can 4bet bluff, so i will do that only with premium hands (i read some game theory tactics on 4bet-5bet bluffs with a polarized range but i can’t apply it here).

I also started doing some hand review of the previous session before i start a new one and note the mistakes down (it helps me find some leeks i hope).

Keep in touch 😉

Come back

In the last weeks i wasn’t able to play from Italy on my EU account. I used the time to learn new things about the low limit cash poker game. I reached to the conclusion that i knew so little about what poker truly means and that i was playing so wrong.

I decided to develop a strategy for preflop play and stick to it, because i had only a slight idea about it before. I am not going to start to play again until i will have this strategy in place.

I also decided to improve my post flop play with some prefabricated tactics that will derive from my new starting hands and i will test it in the game.

Starting with 20’th of December i will return home and i will be able to start again with great ambition and a lot more knowledge.

As a conclusion, this period of not playing and only concentrating on studies has brought me more EV than just playing blindly as i was doing.

I read quite a few articles from: http://www.holdem.ro and http://www.deucescracked.com

I read 2 books (Elements of poker and Small Stakes Hold’em)

I listened to the newest episodes from http://www.pesteprajit.ro and subscried to http://www.pokernews.ro

I feel that this has elevated a lot my poker skills (although i couldn’t put this to a test right now) and i finally understood why the study is as important as play experience.

I can’t wait to start again with the 42 buy ins that i have at 5NL

Break – week 4

Because Poker Stars doesn’t let me play on EU site from Italy IP (where i am currently working) anymore, i am forced to take a break, until i return in my country from where i can play easily.

Unfortunately i don’t know when this will happen, and until then i won’t have anything else to post.

I am really disappointed of the new laws regarding online poker and i really think that this shows there is no longer internet freedom in EU.

Hopefully this won’t end here, and i’ll be coming back soon with new posts.

Week 3

With a small delay, here are the results on the week 10-16 Nov 2014:

Net won=29.86$

VPP 750 bonus=10$

Bankroll=170.85+29.86+10=210.71$

Conclusions:

1) In the first part of the week things went really wrong and i had a loss.

2) I tried a shot at 0.10/0.25 just to gather 5 VPP faster (i was close to the bonus) and things got very lucky, ending up with a nice 40$ profit in only 7 minutes which saved the week.

3) I will keep on going at 0.02/0.05 as planned and play a little bit more tight.

Week 2

This week (3 Nov – 9 Nov 2014) wasn’t so good as i was expecting, with just a small profit of 5.30$.

Also i won only 0.55$ at an all-in shootout (got the ticket by completing mission week)

The results are:

So the bankroll is: 165+5.30+0.55=170.85$ (34 BB).

Conclusions:

1) Still only 8.5 h of play, proving that my goal of 20 h per week is almost impossible to reach because of my day job. In the weekend i can’t just play 10 h because it’s way to much for me to keep focus. So i think i will try to play at least 10 hours next week.

2) Some of the regular players began to notice me, making me harder to win big with good hands.

3) Some of the players with low experience noticed some bluffs, and called on me with marginal hands and i will try to exploit that next week.

4) I had some bad beats on the river and was a little bit tilted afterwards (i have to work on that).

5) I still don’t have enough hands to use HM 2 HUD, but hopefully after next week this will change.

Overall i am looking at the positive side that at least i was on profit, although a small one.

P.S. : At the PCA satellite i got kicked out with KK vs AA (frustrating but it happens).

Keep in touch until next Monday with updates on the 3’rd week.

Week 1

This are my results from the first week of zoom play (27 Oct – 2 Nov 2014):

Net winnings=+25.46$

Add on=+50$ (i had to make an add on in order to grab a ticket to a PCA qualifier which was a very good deal). I still didn’t play on that PCA qualifier but i’ll come back with the news about it.

I transferred some to another account=-10.46 $.

Final results bankroll=100+25.46+50-10.46=165$.

Below you will also see the results taken from HM2.

As a conclusion, i played only close to 8 h, which is a lot less than i wanted to (this is because in the weekend i couldn’t play at all). Also the last session was a mess, but i know that i played much to boldly than i should have (because of the good results in my first 3 sessions). Overall a good profit and now with the add on i am more or less in bankroll (33 buy-in).

I’ll come back with the results from the next week.

The beginning

Right now i have a bankroll of 100$ on Poker Stars and 4000 hands of zoom cash played with an overall net winnings of 0$ because i started with a downswing :)).

The plan is to play ZOOM at 0.02/0.05 although it is out of bankroll and to increase the limit in time. Because i have a day job, i will probably play 2-3 h a day and a little bit more during the weekend. Maybe on a good week i will play close to 20 h.

I will increase the limit after i reach 350$ to 0.05/0.10 having 30 buy-in and a shot of 5 buy in to this new level.

I’ll be coming with an update on each Monday for the previous week or sooner if anything out of ordinary happens earlier.