Poker Analytics Blog

After the lovely green sessions, you always expect the ugly red sessions to come. You can expect bad beats, but you don’t expect to play bad. You say to yourself: yeah they got lucky, yeah they played terrible, yeah I’m much better than they are and I should own the limit. But actually you play terrible! And that’s what I did this week end. A lot of bad calls and lots of pots played too aggressively.

So here are sessions #4 to #7, played this week end:

and we are back to square one!

Let’s continue with the traditional hand review. A rare spot here. I’m glad I haven’t lost my stack, but it is also tough to fold on the button’s raise. I just called because I felt I got trapped, but I was more in a raise or call state of mind, so I never considered to fold here. Would you fold after the button all-in raise?

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€10,98)
CO – CO (€5,00)
BTN – BTN (€2,13)
SB – Hero (€14,16)
BB – BB (€5,67)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is SB with 8♥8♦
UTG calls €0,05, 1 fold, BTN raises to €0,15, Hero raises to €0,60, BB calls €0,55, 1 fold, BTN raises to €2,13 (all-in), Hero calls €1,53, BB raises to €5,67 (all-in), 1 fold, Uncalled bet of €3,54 returned to BB

Flop: 5♣T♣2♦ (€6,44, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €3,54, BTN: €0,00)

Turn: 9♠ (€6,44, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €3,54, BTN: €0,00)

River: A♠ (€6,44, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €3,54, BTN: €0,00)

Total Pot: €6,44
BTN shows A♥4♦ (One pair : Aces)
BB shows A♦A♣ (Trips of Aces)

BB wins €6,02

Another defining moment of the week-end was when I won this allin with tens against kings. The flop came KTx, I let you imagine how it ended. It was beautiful…

So that’s it, there will be a session or two tonight, I’ll try to avoid the mistakes I made earlier and make good figure to show you some nice charts in the next post!

I’ve played two sessions yesterday.

The results are alright, however I’m not satisfied with the way I played. I got pretty lucky on the first two sessions and ended way above my EV. I also started to loosen my game, I just did the opposite of what I said earlier: often fold on 3-bets. I obviously lacked patience and wanted to reproduce  session #1, but that’s not how poker works.

Let’s jump to a concrete hand. In that spot I’m facing an opponent that 3-bets a lot, we’ve been in a lot of pots together, and here I’m going to 4-bet light at the button.

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€5,40)
CO – CO (€6,90)
BTN – Hero (€9,75)
SB – SB (€15,14)
BB – BB (€6,34)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BTN with 9♦A♥
2 folds, Hero raises to €0,15, SB raises to €0,45, 1 fold, Hero raises to €1,00, SB calls €0,55

Flop: 4♣3♦9♥ (€2,05, 2 players – Hero: €8,75, SB: €14,14)
SB checks, Hero bets €1,08, SB raises to €3,68, 1 fold, Uncalled bet of €2,60 returned to SB

Total Pot: €4,21

SB wins €3,94

What you can see here is that I was clearly not prepared to what the villain was going to do. We are almost 200BB deep here and it is not a situation I often faced. So when I hit top pair top kicker I was pretty confident to bet given the fact that he should have a large range, but not ready at all to face a raise and put the rest of my stack in the pot. It is important to assess the situation and to be prepared to react to any kind of move from your opponents. So here, given the stacks and the situation, a check would have been much more appropriate to control the pot effectively, get a free card, and see how the villain was going to play the rest of the hand.

So here is the state of my bankroll at the moment, it is pretty nice even if I’m not playing my A-game. But that really doesn’t matter, let’s have a good look at the horizon: I’m targeting €250 to jump to NL10.

See you soon!

 

My first session of this challenge, sorry Laurent I’m late.

So, we’ve decided to do this challenge and use our app great features to follow it. Self advertisement never hurts 🙂

My goal is to be able to play at NL20 with a good bankroll management, having more than 50 buy-ins.

After creating my new bankroll, starting with 100€, I opened 6 tables of NL5 on my favorite room, Winamax. I didn’t do any table selection, we’ll see if this is needed when I move up.

I’ve also decided to strictly time my sessions. I’ve set the timer on our app of course, this first session will be a one hour session!

Wait for it, I’m playing my session.

Ok, done. Let’s get into my first review 🙂

I’ve played 622 hands on 6 tables (Short handed, 5-max), NL5. I saved 2 important stats as custom fields on the app: 26% VPiP and 23% PFR. I’ve ended up with +21,21€, nice first session.

Like Laurent, I also track my shape (Top, OK, tired, I was at the top here) and my appreciation of my game (3 levels, A,B,C, I was A). I’ve added to those my focus, a lot could happen during a session, phone call, noise, cats f****** around, etc. so the focus let me ask my self at the end of the session if I was “into” my session or not (I have 3 levels as well: Good, Average and Bad, I was really focus here, hopefully for the first session of the challenge!).

Even focused, I’ve lost my biggest pot, 65BB, just doing the easiest mistake ever, be passive, I call 4 times, pf, flop, turn and river with my 99. We were 3 at the table, I was BB and the SB raise on the BTN limp, I didn’t pay attention to this, it was the very beginning of the session, was still trying to open 6 tables. So I just call the raise of SB and then, on J high flop, I noobishly call 3 times to discover a nice J4o in its hand.

First Rule of this challenge: avoid at any cost this line. Never again.

Another good rule I came up during the session, is about the river. At micro limits, it’s quite obvious to understand that something went wrong and your opponent is showing a great appetite for your chips. He takes the lead, re-raise, doing a big bet, like bet pot or overbet. At first, like the first hand I describe, I didn’t pay enough attention to this. 2nd biggest post I’ve lost, 50BB, was with KK, I called a big bet river, even after taking my time to think. I need to be careful on the big bets river, obviously showing strength.

Stacks:
UTG – Hero (€5,12)
CO – CO (€4,98)
BTN – BTN (€5,17)
SB – SB (€4,66)
BB – BB (€4,35)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is UTG with K♠K♣
Hero raises to €0,14, 2 folds, SB calls €0,12, 1 fold

Flop: 3♥J♥7♥ (€0,33, 2 players – SB: €4,52, Hero: €4,98)
SB checks, Hero bets €0,25, SB calls €0,25

Turn: 2♣ (€0,83, 2 players – SB: €4,27, Hero: €4,73)
SB checks, Hero bets €0,44, SB calls €0,44

River: 7♠ (€1,71, 2 players – SB: €3,83, Hero: €4,29)
SB bets €1,71, Hero calls €1,71

Total Pot: €5,13
Hero shows K♠K♣ (Two pairs : Kings and 7)
SB shows 6♥T♥ (Flush Jack high)

SB wins €4,80 

When I see the hand history now, the fold was really easy.

But let’s talk about the hands I’ve won now 🙂

I’ve got lucky (obviously!), I had one AA vs AQ allin pf 100BB, villain 4bet shove my 3bet, easy!
And I won one 50/50 with AKs. This time, I opened UTG (we were 4 at the table), villain 3bet, I 4b and he quickly 5b with a huge bet, half of his remaining stack, 28BB, I had to decide to go 6-bet or fold after my 4bet. I rarely do that so, I ask him all the rest of his stack and he snapped call with QQ, lucky me, I hit an Ace! I don’t think there is a way to fold here.

Nothing else worth mentioning. I did generally value bet my TPTK nicely, I did select carefully the flops to c-bet with air. Oh, I do remember something worth telling: I had the chance to use a move I heard about, the raise-min flop with TPGK when I’m not leading.

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€5,05)
CO – CO (€5,48)
BTN – BTN (€5,60)
SB – Hero (€6,38)
BB – BB (€2,20)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is SB with A♦J♦
UTG raises to €0,15, 2 folds, Hero calls €0,13, 1 fold

So, here, I really don’t like 3betting a open UTG with my “good” hand, don’t see any good reason.

Flop: 4♠A♣4♥ (€0,35, 2 players – Hero: €6,23, UTG: €4,90)
Hero checks, UTG bets €0,23, Hero raises to €0,46, UTG calls €0,23

The flop arrives and here I can use the move, typically a wa/wb situation (way behind or way ahead), doing this min raise will froze the action turn often enough (in micro-limits).

Turn: 8♥ (€1,27, 2 players – Hero: €5,77, UTG: €4,44)

Hero checks, UTG checks

Good.

River: 6♣ (€1,27, 2 players – Hero: €5,77, UTG: €4,44)
Hero checks, UTG checks

I maybe miss some value here, with the move, I can bet/fold river easily, but I was really sure he would have bet something: an easy call for me anyways and not expensive at all.

Total Pot: €1,27
UTG shows A♥T♣ (Two pairs : Aces and 4)
Hero shows A♦J♦ (Two pairs : Aces and 4)

Hero wins €1,19 

I was ahead 🙂

Let’s end this post with this last note I made to myself, there is clearly a lot of value to make when I detect my opponent is on a draw. They won’t calculate any odds in micro-limits, so it’s where I can bet big: flop and moreover turn. They will do their biggest mistakes there and I will do the most part of my winnings 🙂

See you after the next session! Thanks for reading that much 🙂

I’ve completed my first session last night. The first half was pretty tough, for an hour the guys played pretty nit, I was down a little, already asking myself how I was gonna beat the limit. I lost the biggest pot at that moment, with a hand I am not really proud of:

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€2,00)
CO – CO (€6,10)
BTN – BTN (€6,61)
SB – SB (€5,00)
BB – Hero (€5,32)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BB with 5♠9♠
UTG calls €0,05, CO calls €0,05, BTN calls €0,05, SB calls €0,03, Hero checks

Flop: K♠5♥6♠ (€0,25, 5 players – BTN: €6,56, SB: €4,95, Hero: €5,27, UTG: €1,95, CO: €6,05)
SB checks, Hero bets €0,20, 1 fold, CO raises to €0,40, 2 folds, Hero raises to €1,20, CO calls €0,80

Turn: 8♥ (€2,65, 2 players – Hero: €4,07, CO: €4,85)
Hero bets €1,75, CO raises to €3,50, Hero raises to €4,07 (all-in), CO calls €0,57

River: A♦ (€10,79, 2 players, 1 all-in – Hero: €0,00, CO: €0,78)

Total Pot: €10,79
Hero shows 5♠9♠ (One pair : 5)
CO shows 6♦6♣ (Trips of 6)

CO wins €10,09

Here we can see that I am forced to play at the big blinds a suited 3-gapper, and I am offered a nice flop with a pair and a flush draw. I have really played the hand knowing that if the villain had just a pair, I could go allin on the flop with a coin flip, so I tried to make him fold with little success. Two factors showed that he was way ahead: he just limped preflop, and even if a lot of players are limping at these limits, people tend to do it with small pairs. Then on the flop he just min-raised, and that’s a good indicator that he had a monster. So considering that he had a huge hand, I should have just called his raise, and then check/fold on the turn if I had not hit the flush. A big mistake here because I didn’t really pay attention to some big tells.

But the second half of the session has been much better, being more often payed with my hands and also hitting well: I won 220BB in a 3-way 3-betted hand where I hit a set on flop. The session finally ended really well with a net result of +36.51€ which is really nice at those limits.

Overall my strategy is to play aggressively most of the time as the players aren’t really sticky and it is easy to win hands with one or two barrels. Players rarely 3-bet so I tend to fold when they do, and I’m going to call in the few spots that can be really profitable.

Back into Poker Analytics, in the Coaching section, I have decided to add some custom fields to track my shape and my appreciation of my game. I have 3 levels to indicate my shape: Top, OK and tired. I have 3 more for my game, simply A, B and C-game. That will help me play in the best conditions and try to stay focused during the games. I chose to rate this session with a B-game because I am not too fond of a few spots that I played.

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Thanks for reading.

 

We are about to start the challenge I was talking about earlier. Why do we want to start a bankroll challenge? For my part because I had a lousy end of 2012. I stopped playing for two months and just started again, but I need a good context to start from the low stakes again, and having to post my results publicly should help me staying disciplined.

Razmig and I are doing this challenge, we are going to start with 100€ on Winamax, which is the coolest french room. The challenge is going to last one month. I’ll do mostly cash games as I just don’t know how to win tournaments. I’ll post feedback on my performance regularly, and some interesting hands I’ll encounter. So that will make me start with twenty buy-ins at NL5, and I’ll try to have more as I get in higher stakes (if I do…). My objective is to reach NL100 again, but one month seems a bit short to reach that point.

Many asked what are the stakes of that challenge. Well, after many debates, we’ve decided that the loser would have to resign from the company. That should give us plenty of motivation…

Anyway, I’ll post some feedback after my first session, so see you at the tables!