Fuck micro stakes

From now on, when I am ending a session I am ending it AT THAT PRECISE MOMENT. No more of this "sit out until next blind" shit, hoping I catch AA. Because this is what fucking happens on 3 tables simultaneously on your last free hands of the night



And I was so happy having redeemed myself in my last few sessions.

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Oh man wtf have I done to my bankroll.



For some reason I got this really crazy idea that I could bully a bunch of calling stations. I decided I was going to iso-raise pretty much any hand OTB, raise any donk bets, even if they signaled strength, shove over any check-raises, and trap myself with every rag top pair I hit putting my opponents on worse pairs. I even made a few terrible calls just to prove how unlucky I am, knowing that when villain limp calls a KQ25K board then shoves the river that my AA are no good anymore. I kept convincing myself that these fish just got done watching an episode of HSP and are trying all the tricks. WRONG. These people simply arent sophisticated enough to pull that shit off. A little EV variance tucked away in there but this is all my own fault.

BACK TO FUCKING NL2 BABY....

So I put in one last session for the day, and I noticed something. Aside from not being tilted, I ran up my stats to my standard 25/15/3 line. From what I've read this is considered weak-tight. Can anyone explain what you think of a villain with stats like mine? I feel like I'm pretty much just playing ABC poker. When looking back across the majority of my session histories this is a winning style for me. Basically I play strong when I love my hand, and I'm willing to see some cheap flops when I dont. If I connect well I attack.

Anyway, I hope I fucking learned something from this today. I think I'm probably just suffering from a little bit too much Fancy Play Syndrome. It really isnt fucking necessary at these limits. Damn. Wonder if I'll ever learn this game...

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So the other day I was questioning my ability to ever have discipline when I keep moving up prematurely. Well I was a little tight by loose bankroll standards. Wtf does that mean? It means I cant help but play with 10-15 buyins per limit, and for anyone with some skill and confidence, this is actually fine. I have neither, yet I act like I do. Therein lies the paradox. I'm too loose for normal BR management, and too tight for aggressive bankroll management. So someone told me to check out maynard's philosophies on MSNL bankroll mgm't, and of course I became all giddy with excitement and after meeting the requisite 8 BI rule, decided to take a shot at NL25. As most people commented, at these small stakes theres no real reason not to take shots since your roll is such a paltry amount of money in the first place, why hold yourself back indefinitely at NL2 (unless you are just starting out).

Anyway no drama here, had a good 1 buyin session, which is a nice confidence leveler for breaking in a new limit. I've played NL25 before (like most donks i've played a lot of limits, but hopefully THOSE days are behind me) so the bet sizes dont scare me or anything, albeit I did play a pretty weak tight game 25/15/4.3. I actually prefer to call this "picking my spots". Basically I engaged in hands which I deemed +EV, and if I felt I was ahead, I pounded fishy 50vpip villains for staying in with me. Hopefully as my BR increases so will my preflop aggressiveness. Nothing particularly special about this limit seen as of yet. I had a painfully aggressive strategy devised at NL2-NL10 that consisted of massive 5-6xBB raises preflop, full pot cbets and turn cbets, and big 5x raises vs opponents who donk out. I originally wrote that I will probably need to severely curtail this habit at NL25 as the money is starting to mean something to me now and I just dont feel like stacking off so frequently with the way I play.

Other than that, only note I have for today is one particular scenario I remember quite fondly from the days of yore, and that is the NL25 value bet. Yes I believe NL25 warrants it's own discussion around value betting tendencies. As I remember from 6-10 months ago, villains for some odd reason have a common tendency to value bet the nuts fucking weak as shit every single time. We're talkin puttin in $2.50 on the river into a $15 pot with a set of kings and shit. I remembered it then and I see it now, same ole shit, which is fine by me I guess. It does make folding a bit more difficult, and sometimes I pull out all sorts of excuses for calling, you know, "paying for information". Hopefully I'll keep my wits about me and not donate too much money for the above reasons which I deserve to be grilled over.

So cheers to taking shots, gogo $200 BR @ NL25!

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This is hardly a classic degen move in the grand scheme of things, but I think it counts since it involves me "going back to my old ways". I have a confession to make. I've been playing NL10 underrolled for quite awhile now

I was doing fine at NL2 and then NL5, and then I remembered something. A forum post where HSNL players were discussing their BR requirements after going busto or cashing out or whatever. Most of them agree'd that if they were to blow their roll for NL1000 somehow, and start over at NL25 or NL50, they would probably play a 10-15 BI game just because they are that confident they can crush it quickly and move the hell on up. So I looked at my shiny $140 BR, and decided that since I only play 6-8 tables of 6max at a time, I had plenty of breathing room to take a few beats and play higher limits. This is how I officially ended up at NL10. Now ever since then it's been kinda breakeven I guess. A few bad beats followed by some quality rebuilding, but I definitely dont like the fact that I'm breaking BR management pretty heavily here playing with as little as 10 BI's when I have a downswing, and 15 buyins when I'm running hot.

And it gets worse. I ended up shorthanded at one table and some mega donk running 71/5 @ 50 hands just keeps putting the beats on everybody. Naturally he tripples up off me busting QQ twice and something else, with his little miracle flops/rivers. Bitch hit n' runs, so I fuckin follow his ass to an NL25 table, cursing myself for doing this all the way. Naturally I score most of it back thank fucking god, but the point is wtf am I doing? I've been playing so much NL10 the last few weeks that it doesnt even bother me anymore to be underrolled.

Quick session stats reveal the following (fruity NL25 stats simply b/c i was trying to trap hit n run donkey)


So the ultimate question is, can I actually keep playing NL10 right now? My bankroll is $160, which is a good 16 buyins. I mean cmon thats pretty damn close right? Or am I looking at this all wrong. Should I force myself to play NL5 just to teach myself discipline? I did jump back to NL5 a few days ago, even with 12 BI's for NL10 just to see how I would handle it, and I felt so bored coming up 1.5 buyin's in 1500 hands when that could have been 1.5 buyin's at NL10.

One word sums up my attitude to my poker management skills at this moment, and thats "meh...."

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EDIT: Oh goddamnit, somehow I've ended up posting the same hand 10 times. No way I'm reposting, whatever. Sorry.

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So a few weeks ago I started a blog on this site to chart my progress and thought patterns regarding playing a 5 buyin rule, where I move up every limit I am rolled 5 buyins for. I started at NL25, which I did alright at, but could never get past NL50. Learned a lot of hard lessons that I had already read about, but had to learn them for myself to actually sink in.

You can read more here -> http://www.liquidpoker.net/blog/viewblog.php?id=671959

It would be interesting for anybody to comment on my notes to see if I have some serious misconceptions or not. These notes were engineered around a focused 1-table game of 6max, where 100% attention could be given to each hand. I expect to formulate a whole new series of notes for my next quest since I will be playing quite differently.

Part of Daniel's system was to never move down limits, but rather drop his buyin requirement to always be playing 1/5 of his bankroll, even if that means buying in for the minimum. He commented that he feels the whole small ball strategy works really well as players calling tendencies have little to do with bet size as they do with automation, they are either calling or folding regardless so it really doesnt matter what you bet. So definitely bet the least possible to get yourself off the hook, and the most possible when you have a great hand.

So I just finished a FR session at NL50 buying in short stacked and unfortunately lost what little of my roll I had left sitting to the right of a 100vpip fish who just called my BTN shoves with air. Precisely 9To, J9s, and KTo. He paired up every time.

What I dont think Daniel realizes is just how insane MSNL really is today. He doesnt play MSNL, what few times he plays on stars he's usually playing much higher limits, or goofing around at NL50 and such, showing face, fullfilling his contract no doubt. Now that he is actually trying to beat these limits, I think he is in for a rude awakening and the horrible variance that will come, something Chris Ferguson was well aware of when he set out on a similar quest some time back.

I truly feel I have tried every trick in the book, bent every poker rule out there, read everyone's advice and tried to push the envelope and prove them wrong when it comes to the best way to approach this game. And I have truly realized how wrong I was. I thought I could come up with something on my own, my own style, something not really read about, but something that works for me, with good enough results that I can proudly sit back and say I taught myself the game. Wrong wrong wrong.

I will now take this $25 roll, sit down with 100BB's at NL2, and start putting in thousands of hands at FR, never moving up till I hit 20 buyins for the next level. If I fail here, well, I might re-roll myself with $40 and try again since I lack the experience grinding away for hours and shouldnt worry about failing at first. But I have certainly failed at enough other shots at this game to realize it's time I just OBEY THE POKER COMMUNITY.

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I am starting a blog to act as a journal for myself, to be able to reflect back upon day after day, month after month, and see how my frame of mind changes and how my play evolves. Any comments will always be welcome.

I recently read about Daniel challenging himself to go from $10 to $100k by playing 5 buyins per limit at a time. This idea inspired me to try the same, albeit I will be starting at NL25 just because I feel like it, so that means a starting bankroll of $125, and I move up to NL50 at $250. I am simply doing this as I have reached a point where I lack much motivation with this game, and a new "system" like this has aroused by interest, so it's more for fun than anything. I also think it is a rather novel idea for a new challenge amidst all the bankroll building challenges out there which could have some interesting results, and at least offer a lot of excitement.

I may or may not stop the challenge at a certain bankroll, depending upon whether I wish to end it and play properly rolled for a certain limit or not. For instance, if I were to make $20,000, I would probably want to just stop, and either cash out with greed, and play whatever limit that would roll me for. Or of course maybe I'll actually have the discipline to continue playing all the way to 100k. Again, really just for fun since thats all that drives me these days.

Since I expect the swings to be pretty wild I'll probably update with progress after each session, since a good day could mean a new limit, and a bad one could mean dropping two. Since there is no real method to this madness, I have made a few rules of my own:

1) 2 BI stop loss no matter what, to avoid tilt
2) Have to regrind to 5 buyin's before taking another shot
3) Will play one table at a time only
4) If I double up at a table I will sitout on the next blind so as to avoid having too large a percentage of my bankroll on the table at any given point (see post #18)
5) I will play 6max only as that is the only game I am any good at
6) Buyin requirement may increase at higher levels if it looks as though I cant compete, at NL600 for example.

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