Poker Analytics Blog

I’ve not written in a few days because not because I didn’t want to, but because I really didn’t want to. Yes it’s been a freefall to hell. It has been tough not only because I played bad but also because luck has not been on my side. But hey I’ve been rather lucky in the first sessions so I’ve got no right to complain, and that’s the way it is. I probably haven’t slept enough these past few days, and sometimes I feel like I was playing in auto-badpilot.

So here is a beautiful chart, kindly provided by Poker Analytics:

This is the chart of my net result. If you thoroughly followed the previous post, you may notice that I’ve been playing a lot of sessions, because there are indeed a lot of points of the chart. Actually, when I hit the bottom of the curve at -40€, I chose to change things a bit, and play 1€ or 2€  sit and gos.

Here are the stats for the sit and gos.

 

These are ok results, and actually I’m thinking that we’ve chose to put a win ratio under 50% with the red color, which feels fine for cash games but not that much for tournaments. I’m wondering which threshold would be fine for tournaments, do you have any idea?

Back at the challenge, I’ve chosen this time to show a winning hand!

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€2,48)
CO – CO (€5,19)
BTN – Hero (€7,09)
SB – SB (€10,05)
BB – BB (€4,88)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BTN with 5♣4♣
2 folds, Hero raises to €0,15, SB raises to €0,50, 1 fold, Hero raises to €1,16, SB calls €0,66

Here I chose to 4-bet because the small blind has 8% of 3-betting, in one of the most standard spot of the blinds raising the button who has a large range, which I indeed do.

Flop: J♦T♣J♥ (€2,37, 2 players – SB: €8,89, Hero: €5,93)
SB bets €1,36, Hero raises to €5,93 (all-in), 1 fold, Uncalled bet of €4,57 returned to Hero

Total Pot: €5,09

Hero wins €4,76

On the flop, the small blind donk bets, a good really good sign of weakness in that spot. He’s probably afraid of my hand and wants to see a cheap card. He could be either on two weak pairs, or on a draw with over cards with KQ, AK, AQ. I guess he could have queens too, because the range of 4-bets on NL5 is usually really limited to premiums, he’s folding here.

I don’t really know if I’m going to pursue the challenge with sit and gos or cash. Sit and gos are nice because you are detached from the amounts you are palying and really aiming to win. Cash games at NL5 are tough: the range of the players are really hard to figure, and the small amounts tend to make me call way to often in some close spots. We’ll see.

Thank you reading and see you on the tables!

 

 

2nd Session done, it was great at the beginning, then the bad beats started to intervene. I play less than one hour. I wasn’t that much focus on the session, having a lot of noise around me.

 

Long story short, I started with this one:

Stacks:
BTN – BTN (€8,31)
SB – Hero (€10,41)
BB – BB (€6,97)

Preflop: (€0,07, 3 players) Hero is SB with A♥K♣
1 fold, Hero raises to €0,15, BB raises to €0,52, Hero raises to €1,96, BB raises to €6,97 (all-in), Hero calls €5,01

Flop: 8♦9♠6♠ (€13,94, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €0,00, Hero: €3,44)

Turn: 3♠ (€13,94, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €0,00, Hero: €3,44)

River: 5♠ (€13,94, 2 players, 1 all-in – BB: €0,00, Hero: €3,44)

Total Pot: €13,94
Hero shows A♥K♣ (High card : Ace)
BB shows A♠8♣ (Flush Ace high)

BB wins €13,03 

then this one:

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€2,70)
BTN – Hero (€9,52)
SB – SB (€8,14)
BB – BB (€9,61)

Preflop: (€0,07, 4 players) Hero is BTN with K♦K♠
UTG raises to €0,15, Hero raises to €0,45, 1 fold, BB calls €0,40, UTG raises to €2,70 (all-in), Hero raises to €9,52 (all-in), 1 fold, Uncalled bet of €6,82 returned to Hero

Flop: 7♠J♥A♦ (€5,87, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €6,82)

Turn: 3♦ (€5,87, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €6,82)

River: A♣ (€5,87, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €6,82)

Total Pot: €5,87
UTG shows K♥A♠ (Trips of Aces)
Hero shows K♦K♠ (Two pairs : Aces and Kings)

UTG wins €5,49 

and the 3rd one of the session:

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€1,76)
CO – CO (€5,44)
BTN – Hero (€7,13)
SB – SB (€1,47)
BB – BB (€5,21)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BTN with Q♥T♥
UTG calls €0,05, 1 fold, Hero raises to €0,20, 2 folds, UTG calls €0,15

Flop: 5♣7♣T♠ (€0,47, 2 players – UTG: €1,56, Hero: €6,93)
UTG bets €0,84, Hero raises to €2,99, UTG calls €0,72 (all-in), Uncalled bet of €1,43 returned to Hero

Turn: 6♣ (€3,59, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €5,37)

River: 8♣ (€3,59, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €5,37)

Total Pot: €3,59
UTG shows 9♠K♣ (Flush King high)
Hero shows Q♥T♥ (One pair : Tens)

UTG wins €3,36 

After that, I started to be a little upset, obviously I shouldn’t, I need to be used to this kind of hands. It will happen a lot. And even more worst than that.

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€5,64)
CO – CO (€2,05)
BTN – BTN (€4,98)
SB – SB (€6,19)
BB – Hero (€7,13)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BB with J♥T♥
UTG raises to €0,15, CO calls €0,15, 2 folds, Hero calls €0,10

Flop: T♣7♦6♠ (€0,47, 3 players – UTG: €5,49, CO: €1,90, Hero: €6,98)
Hero bets €0,31, UTG raises to €1,05, 1 fold, Hero raises to €1,79, UTG raises to €3,90, Hero raises to €6,98 (all-in), UTG calls €1,59 (all-in), Uncalled bet of €1,49 returned to Hero

Turn: 2♠ (€11,45, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €1,49)

River: 3♠ (€11,45, 2 players, 1 all-in – UTG: €0,00, Hero: €1,49)

Total Pot: €11,45
UTG shows K♦K♥ (One pair : Kings)
Hero shows J♥T♥ (One pair : Tens)

UTG wins €10,71 

It was so easy to find a fold flop, it just the post-bad beat effects. I really need to calm down and not tell me “you need to get your money back”, it’s really a bad idea.

The on this one I preferred think that he was just “on a draw” and lost 70bb like a noob:

Stacks:
UTG – UTG (€5,03)
CO – CO (€8,59)
BTN – BTN (€3,46)
SB – SB (€3,88)
BB – Hero (€6,65)

Preflop: (€0,07, 5 players) Hero is BB with A♣4♣
1 fold, CO raises to €0,14, BTN calls €0,14, 1 fold, Hero calls €0,09

Flop: J♠4♥8♠ (€0,44, 3 players – Hero: €6,51, CO: €8,45, BTN: €3,32)
Hero checks, CO bets €0,22, BTN calls €0,22, Hero raises to €1,32, 1 fold, BTN raises to €3,32 (all-in), Hero calls €2,00

Turn: T♠ (€7,30, 2 players, 1 all-in – Hero: €3,19, BTN: €0,00)

River: J♥ (€7,30, 2 players, 1 all-in – Hero: €3,19, BTN: €0,00)

Total Pot: €7,30
Hero shows A♣4♣ (Two pairs : Jacks and 4)
BTN shows A♠J♦ (Trips of Jacks)

BTN wins €6,83 

 

After all, I lost 7,92€ on this second session, it was a very good one to understand that you need to be calm, no matter what bad beats hits you, you need to stay focus on your game and it should be alright. In micro-limits you just have to wait the other makes mistakes and profit. No mind games, no pay back, no need to be angry, just be patient.

On a good side, I tried on one or two hand what I said on my first post, make them pay more their draw, it works on those two hands but nothing more specific to share on this right now.

There isn’t something else to add to this poor session 🙁

See you soon !

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 🙂