I've managed to close the day winning 8 buy-ins, so 200$ which is a personal best. I usually don't play as many hands as most regular players do.I usually don't even come close.
But today i've played 1800 hands which for me, is a lot. Winning 8 buyins in 1800 hands is pretty good, so i'm quite happy even though it's such a low lvl.
Hopefully i can keep this pass up a bit longer, so i can start lvl 3 shortly.
sweet dreams!
Jul 30, 2007
Busy weekend
I've played a tennistournament last week which resultated in me having to play 5 matches this weekend. I was participating in two events and i managed to reach the semi-finals in the first and was runner-up in the second, so i was pretty pleased.
Back to poker. Due to the tournament i haven't played any hands until this morning. This resulted in a lovely session, where i won 6 buy-ins. This was a nice change of pass as i was strugling a bit in earlier sessions. Winning these 6 buyins has brought lvl 3 of my challenge close. I can't wait!
Back to poker. Due to the tournament i haven't played any hands until this morning. This resulted in a lovely session, where i won 6 buy-ins. This was a nice change of pass as i was strugling a bit in earlier sessions. Winning these 6 buyins has brought lvl 3 of my challenge close. I can't wait!
Jul 26, 2007
Playing your A-game
I haven't been playing my A-game in my challenge lately. I think i dropped about 3 buyins which could have been avoided. Playing these low stakes can be very frustrating as you get sucked out a lot and you lose hands because your opponents play badly. However, this should never affect how you play and you should always try and play your A-game. Being able to do so, is one of the key attributes of a good poker player.
Normally i'm not easily affected by bad beats and periods of cold cards (which cost me a lot of effort) but somehow i haven't been playing very well the last 2 days.
At these low stakes people tend to play very loose passive. Calling you down with a lot of hands, which means to be able to win you need to make hands. But when you get cold cards like i did, it becomes very difficult to win some decent money against these opponents even though i consider myself a far superior player. Your main edge at these lvls is your hand selection and post-flop play, but once you get outflopped all the time and you can't get any action on the few hands you do hit, you can get frustrated and that's what happened to me. BUT, you should NEVER allow that and my punishment is that i have to play this lvl a bit longer.
Some tips on playing your A-game:
-don't play when you're tired
-don't play when you're drunk ( obviously :P )
-don't play with scared money
-don't play when you are tilted
-don't play when you feel you're playing badly, which can be hard to admit sometimes
-don't play for making money or to maintain a certain winrate. Just play the best poker you possibly can and see what money or winrate it brings after.
Wish me luck and the best of luck to all of you.
Normally i'm not easily affected by bad beats and periods of cold cards (which cost me a lot of effort) but somehow i haven't been playing very well the last 2 days.
At these low stakes people tend to play very loose passive. Calling you down with a lot of hands, which means to be able to win you need to make hands. But when you get cold cards like i did, it becomes very difficult to win some decent money against these opponents even though i consider myself a far superior player. Your main edge at these lvls is your hand selection and post-flop play, but once you get outflopped all the time and you can't get any action on the few hands you do hit, you can get frustrated and that's what happened to me. BUT, you should NEVER allow that and my punishment is that i have to play this lvl a bit longer.
Some tips on playing your A-game:
-don't play when you're tired
-don't play when you're drunk ( obviously :P )
-don't play with scared money
-don't play when you are tilted
-don't play when you feel you're playing badly, which can be hard to admit sometimes
-don't play for making money or to maintain a certain winrate. Just play the best poker you possibly can and see what money or winrate it brings after.
Wish me luck and the best of luck to all of you.
Jul 25, 2007
Quick lvl 2 update + a fun hand from lvl 1
Houdy,
I'm doing ok at lvl 2 and am currectly up 7 buyins.That means i'm almost halfway through this lvl.I can't wait to get to lvl 3. I've had some bad beats,which hurt my winrate a lot, but bad beats can be expected especially at these low lvls. The lvl of play is slightly better than lvl 1, but still horrible.
Here's a fun hand from lvl 1: Talking about nice setups and Bad beats...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1295143
I'm doing ok at lvl 2 and am currectly up 7 buyins.That means i'm almost halfway through this lvl.I can't wait to get to lvl 3. I've had some bad beats,which hurt my winrate a lot, but bad beats can be expected especially at these low lvls. The lvl of play is slightly better than lvl 1, but still horrible.
Here's a fun hand from lvl 1: Talking about nice setups and Bad beats...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1295143
Jul 23, 2007
Lvl 1 results and analysis
Ok here we go!
PART 1: results
As you can see i managed to achieve a winrate of almost 20PTBB/100 which i think is pretty decent. i still had to play almost 3900 hands to finish the first lvl which makes it a bit of a grind at such stakes, but hey, it could have been a lot worse.
PART 2: analysis
As i went into this challenge i expected my opponents at this lvl to be very weak and i was right as could be expected. There mostly seemed to be 2 different types of player at this lvl:
1:) ultra passive calling stations: these guys won't raise preflop except maybe aces and they slow play almost every major hand they flop. fortunately they call you down with a lot of hands. from gut-shots to bottom pair or even 2 overcards. My strategy against these players was to take them to value-bet city. The key to playing them is not to bet too much as to push them out but to make them pay off their weak hands. of course they will suck out on you now and then but that's ok as you win a lot more on that hands they don't. i loved to play drawing hands against them as i could chase them cheaply and get payed off once i hit. So i limped suited connectors and axs and pocket pairs up to 99 and raised the ones above. The problem with these players is you can't bluff them so DON'T. In my normal game i'm fairly aggressive preflop but against these players you hardly have any fold-equity so once you miss the flop with like aj there's no point in C-betting. Therefor i decided to limp al lot of speculative hands as to see the flop cheaply and take it from there.
2:) maniacs: due to the fact that the stakes are so low some players play extremely aggresive. pushing flushdraws, top pair without good kicker and they love raising big when they see weakness. My main strategy against these players was to try to induce them to bluff me. Which worked very well. i sometimes raised a good hand and once they reraised me a let them take control of the action, forcing them to bet big while i held a great hand. i made a lot of money from these players, often by outkicking them because they play hands that have too weak kickers.
So to summarise how to easily defeat this lvl would be:
- try and figure out what type of player you are up against. make notes!(this goes for any lvl) and play accordingly. ( read the above)
- don't bluff as these guys wont lay down hands very easily.
- raise your good hands! hardly ever slowplay just value-bet your ass off.
- limp your low pocket pairs, suited connectors and axs and try and to see the flop cheaply and once you make a good hand. value-bet! i can't stress that enough.
another thing i game across this lvl is that a lot of players like the ol' post-oak bluff. i haven't seen that move in like ages untill i started playing this lvl. they min-bet the pot with total air to try and pick up the pot right there or try and prevent you from making a big raise. so that's exactly what i did. :)
and another thing is when you see someone call your flop and turn bet and push allin on the river suddenly they have a monster. they like slowplaying and then push allin on river a lot at this lvl. once i recognised this i saved myself a lot of money by folding some hands on the river.
to finish this lvl i'll show a graph showing my progress during this lvl:
PART 1: results
As you can see i managed to achieve a winrate of almost 20PTBB/100 which i think is pretty decent. i still had to play almost 3900 hands to finish the first lvl which makes it a bit of a grind at such stakes, but hey, it could have been a lot worse.
PART 2: analysis
As i went into this challenge i expected my opponents at this lvl to be very weak and i was right as could be expected. There mostly seemed to be 2 different types of player at this lvl:
1:) ultra passive calling stations: these guys won't raise preflop except maybe aces and they slow play almost every major hand they flop. fortunately they call you down with a lot of hands. from gut-shots to bottom pair or even 2 overcards. My strategy against these players was to take them to value-bet city. The key to playing them is not to bet too much as to push them out but to make them pay off their weak hands. of course they will suck out on you now and then but that's ok as you win a lot more on that hands they don't. i loved to play drawing hands against them as i could chase them cheaply and get payed off once i hit. So i limped suited connectors and axs and pocket pairs up to 99 and raised the ones above. The problem with these players is you can't bluff them so DON'T. In my normal game i'm fairly aggressive preflop but against these players you hardly have any fold-equity so once you miss the flop with like aj there's no point in C-betting. Therefor i decided to limp al lot of speculative hands as to see the flop cheaply and take it from there.
2:) maniacs: due to the fact that the stakes are so low some players play extremely aggresive. pushing flushdraws, top pair without good kicker and they love raising big when they see weakness. My main strategy against these players was to try to induce them to bluff me. Which worked very well. i sometimes raised a good hand and once they reraised me a let them take control of the action, forcing them to bet big while i held a great hand. i made a lot of money from these players, often by outkicking them because they play hands that have too weak kickers.
So to summarise how to easily defeat this lvl would be:
- try and figure out what type of player you are up against. make notes!(this goes for any lvl) and play accordingly. ( read the above)
- don't bluff as these guys wont lay down hands very easily.
- raise your good hands! hardly ever slowplay just value-bet your ass off.
- limp your low pocket pairs, suited connectors and axs and try and to see the flop cheaply and once you make a good hand. value-bet! i can't stress that enough.
another thing i game across this lvl is that a lot of players like the ol' post-oak bluff. i haven't seen that move in like ages untill i started playing this lvl. they min-bet the pot with total air to try and pick up the pot right there or try and prevent you from making a big raise. so that's exactly what i did. :)
and another thing is when you see someone call your flop and turn bet and push allin on the river suddenly they have a monster. they like slowplaying and then push allin on river a lot at this lvl. once i recognised this i saved myself a lot of money by folding some hands on the river.
to finish this lvl i'll show a graph showing my progress during this lvl:
Jul 22, 2007
First level completed!
WOOT! I just completed my first lvl of the challenge by winning 15 buyins at 10NL 6 max tables, which profited me 150$.
I ran into a minor setback when i almost finished the first lvl by losing 2 buyins as i was trying to force the action a bit, because the finishline was so close.After that it became a bit of a grind, which hurt my winrate but i'm still happy about the speed i completed the first lvl with. i'll post my stats with a nice graph tomorrow once i've combined the data from two different pc's i play on.
I will post an analysis of the style of play at 10nl and my thoughts about it aswell.
i'm looking forward to playing the next lvl. i'm hoping i can finish that one quite quickly aswell so i can move to somewhat more respectable limits, so i can can make somewhat more decent money during the challenge. 150$ from lvl is nice, but normally it takes a lot less effort to win it at my normal stakes.
until next post!
I ran into a minor setback when i almost finished the first lvl by losing 2 buyins as i was trying to force the action a bit, because the finishline was so close.After that it became a bit of a grind, which hurt my winrate but i'm still happy about the speed i completed the first lvl with. i'll post my stats with a nice graph tomorrow once i've combined the data from two different pc's i play on.
I will post an analysis of the style of play at 10nl and my thoughts about it aswell.
i'm looking forward to playing the next lvl. i'm hoping i can finish that one quite quickly aswell so i can move to somewhat more respectable limits, so i can can make somewhat more decent money during the challenge. 150$ from lvl is nice, but normally it takes a lot less effort to win it at my normal stakes.
until next post!
Jul 20, 2007
Challenge!!
In honour of my new blog i decided to start a challenge. To replicate how i initially started out with only 50$. I deposited 50$ on Everest Poker and will try and work my way up the ranks. I'll start at the lowest lvl being 10nl and will move up once i've won 15 buyins. i'm forced to move down when i lose 5 buyins. I'll try and update my progress regularly. i will play 4 tables simultaniously so the first lvls could go fast. At least i hope so :) At the end of each lvl i'll try and summarize how people generaly play at that particular lvl and how i tried to adjust my game accordingly. here are my stats thusfar for the first lvl, as you can see i'm doing quite well and am 2/3 on the way to playing 25NL, i hope i can keep this pass up, but i guess it will slow down once i get higher.:)
I chose Everest poker for this challenge as the games are very soft and plentiful.
if you wanna check me out, i'm playing under the alias Geronimo1980. you can click the link on the bottom of the site if you want to try out everest poker aswell
I chose Everest poker for this challenge as the games are very soft and plentiful.
if you wanna check me out, i'm playing under the alias Geronimo1980. you can click the link on the bottom of the site if you want to try out everest poker aswell
Jul 19, 2007
First post
As of today, i'm starting my own blog after being inspired by reading those of others. I am playing poker for about 3 years online now and have been very succesfull thusfar, working my way up from an initial 50$ deposit to playing 200NL very succesfully.
My goal with this blog is to share my pokerexperiences with those who are interested in them and perhaps educating some people so they can improve their game. To do so, i will try to post hand histories and discuss general poker theory. And the occasional Brag or complaint post :) which are so eminent for a regular pokerplayer. I hope people will enjoy reading my blog and i wish everyone the best of luck at the tables.
Geronimo
My goal with this blog is to share my pokerexperiences with those who are interested in them and perhaps educating some people so they can improve their game. To do so, i will try to post hand histories and discuss general poker theory. And the occasional Brag or complaint post :) which are so eminent for a regular pokerplayer. I hope people will enjoy reading my blog and i wish everyone the best of luck at the tables.
Geronimo
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