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: