Lemon

As you could read in my previus post I made my 30BI to play NL5 (I am going to buy-in for 100bb).

I plan to start 8-12 table today and tomorrow to get used to the weird bet sizes (2c SB FREEEAAAKKY) and to see how many regs there are and to get some starting stats on them.

But then I will start 4 tabling as usual and open my range to about 16/13 (I plan to play wayy more hands from LP now) so my questions to all you grinders who started from the bottom on Stars:

How much is NL5 different from NL2?
What is the difference between playing 100bb deep and 250bb, I kinda got used to the higher number.

Are there enough not too nitty regs which would justify close following and extensive attempts at reads of all my tables?
(So far I focused only on my game and correct play of hands, and just was paying close attention to PF and C/bet behavior)

How 'Logical' the limit is compared to retarded NL2, do people play more rationally?

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Comments (9)

My first month with poker:

6hours/day on tables average + at least 2 with reading etc.

I went from destructive nitting on iPoker (That site is unplayable NL2) to Pokerstars, which became my home and I don't even think about leaving.

I played mostly 4 tables all the time, and experienced many aspects of microstakes poker. I even had a massive 1/3 BR downswing once, which helped me to lift my play incredibly.

I started using technical approach towards ranges using tracker and Stove since the downswing, and concepts of many hands suddenly came into my mind. This showed me how to adjust to all opponents, what are my odds for c/bets and also all those awkward calls which I wouldn't make before if I wasn't the favourite in that hand (Ie. I was not calling many +ev situations)


It was all nice, but the improvement in understanding poker made me even more angry about the idiocy at NL2, where you can't really be sure about ranges at all, and I have developed a very weird patterns.
I Watched how the stupidest players were bluffing and have done the same for the nuts (ie. just call a small raise with set and then push it all-in on turn with huge success), and I have imitated many stupid moves like that, which are very profitable at this stake.

This made me SICK, and I decided today that I have had enough of NL2.
Having learned from my mistakes though, I know I couldn't go around by BR management. I set myself a goal of 30x 100bb BI's for nl5. I was close once before the major downswing, but again I am very grateful that I could experience it before moving up.



My day started normally, I went to 4 tabling as usual, posting losing hands here and counting equity for hands I wasn't so sure about. A learning mode you would say.
As the day progressed and I saw I go above 10BB/100 I increased the number of tables up to 9 and started grinding. I made myself a huge bowl of rice, put on some loud HipHop shiz to my 5.1 speaker system and went for the longest grind so far.


I reached about $148 and than it happened, I started to get tired as hell and whats worse, I didn't resist to the urge to check cashier every 5 minutes now, so hard I wanted to be on $150.

What followed is not surprising, I opened my range and started bluffing too much and I went down to $143 at one point.
I started to get fucking angry, and I realised that I can't play intelligent open game anymore
I was slowly adding tables, until I got to number 18, and started ultra hardcore nitting.


And Guess what, Its much easier to find the total idiots on NL2 this way. After exhausting grind I Stacked off with some nice sets and once one full BI with Ace high and... I DID IT!

$150 At least ! :D



And as for todays summary,

Many many hours.

The day went surprisingy smooth, with almost all coolers being offset by a heater or some retard calling with nothing on other tables.



And as for my first poker month:





As an ending note I would like to thank you all on Liquidpoker for your amazing support, the constructive criticism and advice I have recieved has been priceless.


I am going to take a break from poker for couple of days as I am so exhausted right now, and when I come back I will taste NL5 with 5BI max loss limit.

Thanks for reading, LemOn

0 votes

Comments (3)

Seriously, 45$for our flat per month and this happens. Its so annoying when it goes down for a almost a minute always and I lose blinds/fold nice hand PF/ or THIS HAPPENS:



+ Show Spoiler +

I am leaving this flat in 3 months so its not worth cancelling but ...daaamn

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Comments (7)

Yeah, I lost 1/3rd of my BR in one single day when I felt my game was at its best actually.

This has openned my eyes really and I am grateful for this downswing, and that it came so early in my poker progress. So what I learn from this and How do I improve my game:


I will play much less
I have the basic theory under my skin. I know how to calculate my remaining odds and when to call with simple draws, basic BR management, and majority of betting concepts as well from LP, pokerstrategy and High Stakes Poker (although I can't use any of the HS poker ones just yet really, no point against calling stations)


What I don't know is specific equity for specific hands against specific ranges. I will stop the useless 9 table grinding, cut to 2-4 tables and I will calculate my expected equity for majority of hands using Equilator.
and in order to do tyring work I have to cut my sessions lenght for now.

I will pay attention to every single one of my hands and I will play very little amount of them.

Stop-loss
I am not setting any for a table. If there is a fish than I am staying at NL2. But I am setting a ceiling of 3current BI's for a session and 5BI's for a day. If I reach it I simply stop playing. Period.


I Ignore Winnings
If the stop-loss is not in play, I will not pay attention to my Winnings graph. I may look at the end of a day, but I will try not to open it or cashier mid-day as I have been doing repeatedly and too often. Winnings are irrelevant at my level, hands are.


Thats it, I hope I can stick to my rules. And I would love to ask all of you to Comment Throughouthly on all my posted hands. As of now I am only posting hands with my wrong reads or decisions in them, none of that rofl lucky shit.

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Comments (11)

Today I started sharp and focused. I had some suckouts and made some mistakes here and there but I was like hey, winnings don't matter at this level, its the hands I play that are relevant.
So the heavy losses did not affect me until very late, when I made 3-4 stupid mistakes (watch my hand history).

So I reverted from my more open style to tilt-busting total nit grinding. And guess what, the losses did not stop. Since I made the switch I started to lose less, but still I didn't get called 6x in a row with pocket aces, and when I get called with AJ I got sucked out with J8 or simmilar.
Two pair on the flop is nothing, and if I had flush I could be sure Fullhouse is around the corner.

Very depressing day indeed, I am finished for today and maybe will start with Poker after weekend.

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Comments (9)

Another year came along and my Birthday was here once again. I am 22 now, and I am getting nearer the middle twenties.
And was I celebrating my birthday you may ask, what crazy party did I throw or wild things have done?
None. I am at home alone, sipping 4pack of lager and playing poker. How did this happen you may ask.


You should first be familliar with my situation. Two and a half years ago I went from Czech Republic to Scotland to study College (something between school and 'college/university' in non-uk terms), and this September I moved to the capital, Edinburgh to go straight to second year of a University.

I found a flat with 3 french students, and assumed I'd have a marvelous time with them. But although living is ok, we take care of the flat etc. but aside that I don't really get much conversation with them because they just became comfortable using french at all times and have only another french friends coming over. So no celebration is in order with my flatmates really.

Another massive hit in my confidence was the financial crisis. You can imagine my expenditure when I moved to a big city after two years from a small town college. Parties Parties and more Parties. Why not? I have been workign before and with 2 solid 30hrs per week baker experience and my HND Diploma in Administration and IT I knew I could get a job whenever I wanted. Wrong.

Since my finance started to dry up around mid-december, I sent about 40 jpba apllications and I had 1 (One) Interview. Apparently nobody likes part-time students anymore.
The only job I got two weeks ago is house to house distribution and collection of home improvement crap catalogues (which is actually quite useful for someone but I'd never buy anything). This job had about $16 return for around 9 hours of work. Not much really.
So I got hit hard by money shortgage. I have a fund in Czech currency that covers approximately my rent and bills, and then about $130 per month for everything else.

So I had to cut on socialising almost completely, was 120 days without contact lenses which I wore day by day for 5 years prior to that and even my food is the lowest value with some weeks consisting of chinese instant noodles and pasta with spice only. And I even couldn't afford to travel to my local sport, floorball which I used to play on Top level before coming to the UK.

Luckily enough, I still got my amazing Girlfriend which I got from my glorious first months, and who once saved my neck with borrowing me money for rent. But unluckily for today she found herself a simmilar job, just three times better paid and easier (she doesn't collect catalogues back and doesn't deliver crappy bathroom stuff back after the orders, if there are any)


So this is why I am alone on my birthday, sipping beer and posting a blog which would in previous years usually come with my massive headache, puke in the bed and some random junkie next to me the day after.


But don't get me wrong, I am not feeling down or anything. I got a lot of time for studying and reading (which makes me a star and by far the major contributor to all my classes), I am in a serious relationship for the first time in my life and I enjoy it, I got some moneyz sent over for my birthday which will help a lot now, and also I got poker, which somewhat replaced starcraft for now when I need to suckout all the theory before adding time for THE GAME again, and of course two bestest sites in the world and the great people in them, TL and LP.


Thanks for reading.




P.S. This is a chart that accounts for my entire cash game poker carreer up until age 22. (I don't count the 4 days of useless nitting on iPoker)

I am satisfied with 8BB/100, learning how to use tracker from the very beginning and massive amount of information I gathered thanks to LP, Pokerstrategy, Pokeroom school, High Stakes Poker, and others.
I think I got decent base for my future poker progress and hopefully I will feel confident to move up pretty soon.

0 votes

Comments (8)

Oh yeah, you have to look at his stack to find it entertaining
Submitted by : LemOn[5thF]

PokerStars Game #25608971358: Holdem No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2009/03/05 0:18:50 GMT [2009/03/04 19:18:50 ET]
Table Delphinus X 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: xerene ($1.94 in chips)
Seat 2: DoC.LemOn ($9.76 in chips)
Seat 3: Sir WDcosmo ($5 in chips)
Seat 4: petepuuha ($1.44 in chips)
Seat 5: fofa1 ($3.96 in chips)
Seat 6: RoYal_Flo ($2 in chips)
Seat 7: byt4444 ($4.96 in chips)
Seat 8: GXP UNO ($3.03 in chips)
Seat 9: minkki1 ($0.70 in chips)
byt4444: posts small blind $0.01
GXP UNO: posts big blind $0.02
Sir WDcosmo: posts big blind $0.02

Holecards
Dealt to DoC.LemOn
minkki1: calls $0.02
xerene: folds
DoC.LemOn: raises $0.06 to $0.08
Sir WDcosmo: folds
petepuuha: folds
fofa1: folds
RoYal_Flo: folds
xerene leaves the table
byt4444: folds
GXP UNO: folds
minkki1: calls $0.06

Flop (Pot : $0.21)

   
minkki1: bets $0.22
DoC.LemOn: calls $0.22

Turn (Pot : $0.65)

   
minkki1: bets $0.16
Grillovich joins the table at seat #1
DoC.LemOn: calls $0.16

River (Pot : $0.97)

   
minkki1: checks
DoC.LemOn: bets $0.48
minkki1: folds
Uncalled bet ($0.48) returned to DoC.LemOn
DoC.LemOn collected $0.97 from pot
DoC.LemOn: doesnt show hand

Summary
Total pot $0.97 | Rake $0
Board  
Seat 1: xerene folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 2: DoC.LemOn collected ($0.97)
Seat 3: Sir WDcosmo folded before Flop
Seat 4: petepuuha folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: fofa1 folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 6: RoYal_Flo (button) folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 7: byt4444 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: GXP UNO (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: minkki1 folded on the River

0 votes

Some coolers, some suckouts but especially my neverending tilts lead to this:



Sick Sick shiz that pins me down to NL2.

These peaks and lows are with BI's of $3. I have to play with 30BI's BR not to wipe out half my money when I am going down

+ Show Spoiler +

0 votes

Comments (3)

I own my limit. And when I say own I mean 20BB pure pwnage destruction.

But what owns me is my tilting. And when I tilt I tilt hard, I start to believe in luck and it never comes, so I push it even harder.
I wiped out my winnings so many times it makes me sick.



But Today after 3-4 tilts I finally recognised when it was coming. I started posting all my lost hands where I hope the card with 30%EV simply must come because it didnt in so long, and when 2 hands like this occured in a row with a loss of $2 I simply left and did my measly job of magazine distribution. I came back and continued rampage, and now I finished yet again because the tiredness is coming.




This is all nice, but once again I first have to prove I can stay strong over the next long period of weak hands and bad beats that will almost certainly come as it did five times already after an upswing.
If I can handle it and at least stay flat over my next playday I will finally feel confident I can actually achieve something with poker.

0 votes

Comments (6)

Thats it, I am done with NL2 and I don't know why anyone who knows the basics should play it on iPoker, no matter what BR he has

1) The Minimum Buy-in of $1 makes prudent Shortstack theory worthless. 100 BB all the time is simply too much. $2 is a must when catching an occasional fish, but BR doesn't allow me to go higher.

2) The ridiculous 10s counter encourages multitabling. Which increases delays between rounds even more, forcing me to 8table after 5 days of poker to get some action here and there.

3) The 50 BB min and many people coming with $5 (max allowed on all NL2 tables on iPoker) cripples the windfall from stealing blinds, and because of the ridiculous amount of multitablers it takes ages to find a fish that calls by 3Bets with lower cards.

4) The motivation plummets - 100 BB's, loong loong games or rock multitablers make it a fishing expedition which is very hard. I am forced to multitable, don't pay attention to tables and can't squeeze PT stats into the small windows.

I am moving up to NL4, even with my $13 BR on VCPoker.
NL2 showed me hands value and some basoc tricks, but many rules of poker and strategies for almost any different stake are not applicable there. Time to play some real poker now and get my $1 buy-ins worh it

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Comments (23)