Merry Christmas

Hello guys,

Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate xmas, to the rest of you…I hope you enjoy the festive food :P

I’m in between a family/ friends gathering and I have plans for tonight as well to meet up with some close friends.

I feel like playing poker but I am not expecting to see any traffic at this day/time. I want to make a little schedule for my holidays grinding and I know I won’t be able to do that tomorrow (cough cough hangover).

My targets for the upcoming days are to play and study almost the same amount of time and it is as follows : 

•  30mins warm up with a poker video
• 1h poker session
• 15 mins coffee break
• 1h session or 1h review (if losing) 
• 1h session or 1h review (depending on what I did before)
• Long break for real like things 
• Repeat if I got free time :D 

I think I can follow all the above schedule no matter what I have to do on the day, 4h are not too many to spend on poker anyway.

I hope my schedule to help you follow a routine yourselves and be motivated as I am :D

Happy holidays <3

Back to blogging

Hi guys,

There are not many excuses why I have disappear and haven’t updated my blog. I caught up with other things (poker and non-poker related) and writing a blog post on a regular basis wasn’t really on the top of my list.

What I have been doing the past two months? I was really focusing on my game. I was studying, playing a looooot and start talking poker and strategy with my friends.

Back in October, I felt that I wasn’t playing great, I was lazy to study and pretending not to see my mistakes. So I start grinding, I made 50k and 60k months respectively which I think is a huge number considering I still got a job :/

At some point I was chasing VPPs, FPPs and bankroll peaks. I made my targets, I can’t complaint about that. However, December found me tired and all I wanted was to go on holidays.

So here I am, taking a break and being in Greece for the Xmas holidays. I am taking my own pace, and I don’t want to stress over points and targets. I have plenty of time to do that in January J

At the beginning of the month, I realised that I have a virus on my computer and this resulted to lose a lot of files, including database and player notes on stars. I tried to play without stats but it felt ugly and awful. So I emailed stars and they send me a very large part of my lost database. I have no words to say how grateful I am with stars support and for helping me out with that.

I am still missing some hands, and graphs are not as pretty as they used to be, but to me the most important thing is to have stats on my opponents and I don’t mind not knowing what my win rate was 6 months ago.

As I am not playing as much, I am focusing on my game more, try to study and review hands and also I updated my HUD (looks so beautiful now). I decided to use PT along with HEM and take advantage of what each programme does best. PT would be used for live play from now on (did I mention my new HUD?) and HEM for review. Sorry PT but I am so used to do review on HEM J

Among all the above work, I am also in some study groups on Skype. I am very happy that I have met people who we share the same passion about poker and we can talk about hands all the time.  It’s not only about poker, I am happy that we have built some strong relationship and we help each other in any way we can. I won’t get into details but I really appreciate some things these guys have done for me when I needed them. Poker can be a lonely hobby/ activity/ job so, knowing that there are people who will support you and help you it is a very nice feeling.

This is becoming a very long post, so I better wrap it up before I bore you. I will be updating you more often from now on. Enjoy the Christmas holidays and let’s all get motivated to reach our targets. J

Good luck at the tables. 

Trip to Austria and UK laws

Hello everyone,

I feel bad for not making a post for a while. I have been busy travelling signing petitions for online poker.

Two weeks ago I spend a long weekend in Salzburg, Austria. I absolutely loved that city!!! The weather was beautiful to begin with. There are a few things to see in terms of sightseeing but it is not a very touristy city. I like visiting interesting and historical places but for a weekend adventure I don’t want to spend 3 days walking all over the city and rush “to visit everything”. Salzburg has the perfect balance on that. I did a little a bit of shopping too and tried a few German/Austrian beers. I need to start looking for pubs in the UK that serve these beers now. :D

Back to poker now…the only thing that I have been focused on was the new legislation regarding the players from UK. At first, Pokestars said that from 1^st of Oct we would have to play in the .co.uk client however, we will be able to play with all the players’ pool from the .com network. So far, doesn't seem to be any problem. Along with that Gambling Commision said that in order to “protect” the players the auto-rebuy and auto-reload will be removed. So, if we want to reload in a cash game, we would have to do this manually. There was a lot of dispute over this auto-reload feature and due to that they announced that they will make their final decision in a month’s time (1^st of Nov). I read on 2+2 that GC has agreed not to force the poker sites to remove the auto-reload feature. However, there’s not an official announcement yet, but things seems to go the “right” way.  We will find out pretty soon.

I have picked up some funny hands from my recent sessions:

It was nice to have him shoving the river when I have the nutzz :D

He made a mistake betting 2/3 off my stack and he ccouldn't fold given the pot odds. But I don't think I EVER have worse than A2 there…

I was really bragging about this hand managing to get max value. :D 

Best of luck at the tables. Promise my next post to be sooner! 

Coaching

Hi Guys,

I have been asked so many times about my coaching that I have now decided to make a post about it to sum up all the details for you guys. :)

I have started writing so many different things about coaching and I really don't know where to start. So here's how I got started:
I was listening to a podcast from Mike McDonald where he mentioned at some point that he had a coach that helped him improve his game and resulted in winning an online tournament, and I started thinking that if Mike McDonald had a coach I should for sure have one as well. I mean I am not anywhere close or as good as Mike is and this guy is trying to improve his game and learn things while I am staying idle.

I have been following Felix Schneiders for quite a while and I always liked his style and approach to the game. His #grindingitiup series on YouTube had given me a few good tips about the game already. When he mention in a video that he doesn’t like tournaments but loves cash games I thought that this is the right guy.
So I got in touch with him and we started working on my game. That's why I have decided to start my blog as well, to keep track of my progress.

Felix is a great coach and he has really helped me a lot to improve my game and create a better approach to it. Having a coach is more of a milestone in your poker progress (I don't want to say career) because it is the moment you decide to take things differently and put some real effort in your game. We all have heard winning and very successful players saying that they were losing and then they made “their last” deposit and they never looked back. This didn't happen because they went on an insane winning strike but it happened because they decided to study, put some hard work and effort in the game.

This is what a coach is going to offer you. The ability to think different, to be able to see the “right” spots and play better than you used to. Close friends kept asking me how my sessions go and if I have start crushing the game. However, this is a very wrong approach. What I have learnt so far is that Felix (and every coach) don’t have a secret recipe that will make you become a successful player overnight. It requires a lot of work and mostly a looooot of studying.

That’s what I have been doing the past months. I am playing as much as I can and I am trying not to focus on the results. I even avoid to check my balance. I have HEM to tell me if I am winning or losing. But most importantly I am trying to learn and in order to do that you have to make mistakes.

With Felix, we do a lot of review and progressively talk about different topics to improve my game. Then I am trying to put into practice what I have learnt and only focus on these topics instead of all the things that I might be doing right or wrong.

At first, it seemed really difficult and a lot of times I was feeling as a complete novice to the game. However, after a lot of hours of theory and discussion I can say that I am more confident now and more importantly I feel that I am applying what we have talked about, into my game.

Don’t get me wrong, of course I don’t believe that I know everything, there’s still a long way to go but I feel the improvement. Now, whenever someone talks about a hand that he played, all I am thinking is a matrix with his range and the hands he could be playing on that spot.

If you are interested to have a coach, I would suggest you to find a person that plays the same game as you do. Of course I would recommend you Felix if you are playing 6max cash games. He is very positive and supportive and he always there to give me some feedback on my questions, something that I really appreciate. If you want more info you can visit his site http://www.grindingitup.com/

Hope I didn't bore you with my long post. Best of luck at the tables :) 

One step at a time

Hello Guys,

After my last post where I said that I totally burned out, I think it's time to do some evaluation on that.
What happened the past months was that I was adding things to my schedule without realising that you can't do everything at once. I ended up being stressed, chasing vpps and thinking poker in times that i should be relaxing instead.

So what I did the past two weeks was to take a break. Or anyway, I feel that I took a two weeks break. I slowed down in playing online, I had a couple live poker sessions (which are way more relaxing and good confidence boost) and I didn't have any poker coaching (because coaching means volume and homework).

Beginning of the week, and of September I start grinding online again. I am not playing crazy long sessions but I play zoom and it is easier to play more hands. So far I am meeting my volume/ vpps targets and I am happy with it. I feel much better and in a clear state of mind too.
I went for shopping too, and that helped a lot.

A little a bit of bragging now.. The very first hand we reviewed on my coaching session, was a hand where I folded AAs because I got scared of a flush. I happened to have correct odds to call there and recently I found myself on a similar spot where I called and won the hand. I felt quite proud in terms of putting into practise what I have learned.

Today, I played an online "homegame" with my colleagues and I won the tournament!!It was more of a sng to be honest, but I prefer to call it a tournament, it feels like a bigger achievement.  I am looking forward to go to work tomorrow and brag about it all day :)
My Sunday grind went well too. I had a solid session but I only played for two hours as I put a lot of my focus in winning that office tournament. ;) And also I had to write this blog post.

To sum up on my evaluation (and a note to self) is to take one thing at a time. It is good to have multiple things to keep us busy but not to overdo it. Small steps at a time.

I keep saying that I want to make a post regarding coaching but what I have written so far will make it a very long post. I will try to tidy it up and post it soon.
That's all for now, I wanted to share with you that things got better in all the aspects.

Best of luck at the tables.

Burnt out and come back.

Hello everyone,

It’s been a rough week. I didn't have enough time to grind online (only had short sessions) as I was working on a project from work. On Thursday evening I managed to finish the project I was working on and also had very positive feedback (which is great). I came home and I was only thinking to start grinding to make up the volume I missed.

I turned on the computer and after a 5mins stare at the screen I realised how tired I was. I thought I would be fresh the next day but I wasn’t. I was also planning to go play a live tournament and cash during the weekend but I couldn’t leave home. I was exhausted.

On my previous post I was moaning a little that I can’t find enough decent games at the regular tables.

Adding the lack of volume, me being tired and not playing my A game I had a losing weekend. I was a mess, playing random tables, not thinking about poker but just clicking buttons. I had some moments of “clearance” and made some correct plays but overall I am not happy of my game during these days. On top of that HEM said that they fixed the hud problem with zoom poker but this didn’t applied on my computer. Lol

I spoke with the coach and he told me not to worry about the regular tables and that we will start working on zoom from now on, which is more fun. So I decided to drop down and play 10nl zoom as hud still doesn't work. This would only be until my next coaching session.  I am going to have to prepare and adjust my ranges for our next session too. I also emailed Hem support with my problem but their reply wasn't so helpful simply because they only told me to open hem first and then stars.

10NL zoom has been great so far, played without hud but it’s 10nl, it’s not that hard. I can easily add more volume, I save a lot of time not having to table select and also I feel people are more “creative” there ;)

So today, I opened stars to complete the summer mission. Have you seen the summer missions? I really love them. I have already cashed in one of the all in shootouts. I was reading a blog post and 1 tabling at 10nl zoom in order to win 3 hands at showdown. I wasn’t really paying attention until I checked if I had completed the mission and I saw the hud stats at the zoom table!!

This instantly made my day. I was really really happy about that. How great is that? I can grind again!! I feel so motivated! I can't believe this mood change in only 2 days. I have already start playing a decent amount of hands and I am pleased with the win rate/performance so far.I will finish my studying in ranges for zoom and play as much as possible. 

Also, EPT Barcelona just started and we will be able to watch some really good poker from the live stream at pokerstars tv.

Speaking of good poker I want to share with you one of my favourite videos. It is from the Big Game with Dani Stern vs Phil Hellmuth.

 I like all the lines that Dani Stern took in the hands and I believe he has played some really good poker there, taking full advantage of the situations. Sometimes I watch it as a warm up before a grinding session.  

I have so many things to do / follow up, all of them poker related but I am looking forward. I will keep you updated with my zoom “adventures”. 

PS. I might have missed the live tournament and the cash games during the weekend but I still managed to make a little profit out of it. I had a percentage on my friend on one of the side events. My friend finished 2nd (vwp!!) and this made up for what i have missed. 

Gl at the tables

"table selection"

Hi guys,

hope things go well with your grinding. I am still struggling to find more free time to play and the games to be good at the same time.
For instance, I had an hour spare this morning and without second thoughts I loaded stars and start looking for games.
Ermmm, yeh Monday morning, every recreational player was at their 9-5 jobs and only regs were at the tables. I did some hand review during that time but it is a bit annoying to want to play and know that you can play well and being unable to find a decent table.

That's my monthly graph so far. Volume wise it sucks i know. I am playing regular tables, and lately I find it difficult to open more than 4 good tables at the same time.

I have been told a couple of times that my table selection wasn't that great and I am trying more to find the best seats etc etc. If I am lucky enough I might find a table with 2 bad players(1 is always shorty), 1 unknown and 2 regs. Once the short stack losses their money and the other bad player double ups and leaves, the game breaks (instantly sometimes) and I have to start checking the lobby again and again to find new tables.

I might sound like I am complaining but I am not really. Just I don't like that my free time doesn't sync with the good games all the time.

On Friday I decided to play Zoom and I asked for some advice from a 25nl zoom reg. He gave me a couple of tips and bad players names that were playing at the time. I loaded 2 zoom tables and soon I found out that my HUD wasn't running. He said not to worry as I don't have stats from the zoom pool anyway. But honestly, I was feeling clueless. It was folding to my button and I couldn't check the blinds fold to steal stats and I was like "now what to do???"

I know that you have to have stars running as an admin to make HEM working for Zoom and I have already set that. I don't know why it wasn't working but I just decided to stay at my regular tables that I am more comfortable with. After all, I have stats on these players.

Mental..intrusion! 

 I want to make a reference to something that happened last week and it did really affect me. I had a conversation with a poker player (experienced but with "old school" thinking) about ev and how ev evens out in the long term. I don't want to get into details but we end up having a decent disagreement that day.

He managed to convince me that I am wrong ( when in fact I wasn't) simply because he was strongly supporting his opinion. And I went home feeling terrible and that I am a really bad player that I will always be losing. I spent that day searching math theories, messaging some math-wizards poker friends only to have them verifying that I was right.

I am only mentioning the above story because it is really important to find the right people to talk with (lesson learnt). I don't mind that I wasted a day to search and learn some math theories.  But I do mind that I didn't play poker that day and I do mind that I was feeling that all the effort that I have put in poker is not worth it. Everybody is not an expert in every topic so next time I ll find myself on a "similar spot" i will not get involved. Talking with the right people is as important as the table selection I mentioned before.

There's always a "but" and the good outcome of all that is that recently I have been introduced to some people that play the same stakes as me, we think quite alike and so far we have a very healthy discussion over hand histories and lines.

Sorry for the long post :) I have to run to bed as I have to be up early tomorrow.
Gl at the tables.

Trying to grind

Hello everyone,

I started witting a post yesterday but I was too tired to finish it.

Even though I finished the session in profit yesterday I was sooo unhappy of the way I played a hand. I opened JJ, get called from the BTN and sb squeezed. I decided to call, btn folds.
The guy cbets a 9high board and I kept saying to myself "i dont think he does that with 1010s, i am behind" and then I raise! He obv didn't do that with 1010 and I end up losing a stack.

I need to find something to do when I am making these bad plays. I am thinking maybe 50sit-ups for every hand I play bad.  xD

Flopzilla
On my previous post I wrote about Flopzilla and Notecaddy. I was thinking which one would be better to buy.
I finally bought Flopzilla. I love it! I think it is really really useful. Even though I am only using it for a few days now, it has been proven to be a nice tool. I use for every hand I am reviewing and trying to adjust what I have learned in my play.

Past week, in terms of poker was okayish.  Weekend was really good but the weekdays weren't that great. Most of the hands were unlucky. I have doubled up all the short stacks with every possible hand.
AK vs KQ  on an Ace high flop or AJ vs A10 aip. and the best of it was AK vs 106
I will play all day with this guy who shoves with 106 but losing in all of these spots is a little a bit annoying. I start getting a bit moody for losing all my all in/ flips and yesterday I was surprised when I won with AK vs QQ. I was like, how come??

The August just started and I already know I will not probably be able to put some volume online. I have to prepare some presentations for work and also next week I want to play a live tournament.
Have I said before that I don't like tournaments? So, in between the sessions and my reviews I will also have to prepare my slides. Not stressed at all about that but it is time consuming.

For those of you from the UK, I ll be playing the Goliath in Coventry. I ll probably end up grind the cash games all the weekend, if the games are good. Last year I remember that the majority of the cash players (that don't seem regs) were all tight and playing "scared money". Hopefully, they will loosen up a bit this year.

I will definitely post updates from that, there would be some interesting hands for discussion.  
gl at the tables :)

Software ideas and no poker today!

Hi everyone!

Yes, you read that right. I will not be playing poker today.

There's not any harm to take a day off, but I feel I didn't deserve that day off. In terms of profit I haven't lost anything because simply I didn't play...I will explain why.

After work, I joined some workmates for a late lunch/early dinner and a pint. I only stayed for 2hours and had 2 beers. Then the guys went to the casino to play a tournament. I didn't join them as I don't like tournaments (specially the daily live ones!) and also because I drunk beer.
I know, it was only two drinks and I wasn't drunk at all but I simply I can't play poker when I have a drink. I am in a more relaxing mode and I make mistakes!
I have experimented with that a couple of times and it's not profitable for me to play when I drink. I play homegames with friends but never for serious money.
Poker is about discipline after all and being able to identify your "leaks" and prevent them from happening is very important.

So no poker for me today :( As I am not drunk I feel a bit guilty for wasting the few precious spare hours that I got. I don't mean, not going out with friends and enjoying life. Given that I only got 4 days till my next coaching session, I shouldn't have skipped one of them. Next time, only drinking J2O strictly!!
Confession: Back in my head I was thinking to skip today from online grind and go to the casino for some live action. Mondays, are really good and busy days in my local casino. But, NO.

As I have done my review for the past sessions, watched the new poker videos from the people I follow and made all my graphs there's not much to do. I was checking some new poker software though that I am thinking to buy anytime soon.

First one I am thinking to buy is Note Caddy. From the HEM website, it seems that it creates a lot of useful notes but I guess you will need to have a large number of hands on the villain to make profitable decisions.  

The other one, I might buy is Flopzilla. It looks good with a lot of interesting things about ranges. Villain's range is an endless topic for discussion and having stats on how often he hits a certain combo of his range makes Flopzilla a software I definitely need to have.

Both software cost $60 + $35 respectively. I am not thinking about the cost but more of how much useful these tools are in the low stakes as 25NL. I already overanalyse some spots and overthinking that I am worried that I will do more often if I have a software to confirm for me that villain does this or that.

I am still debating what to do. Is any of you using them or started using them while playing my stakes? I am really looking for some feedback on that topic. :)

PS. Any thoughts on table scanner?

gl at the tables ;)

Micromillions and sick cash games

Hello,

I would like to make a post with my Micromillions "adventures" and deep runs....but I don't have any!

I am not a tournament person...at all! Everytime i enter a tournament and I lose I say to myself " i will never play tournaments again" but there is so much value in them that sometimes it's hard to resist.
There are a few things that I don't like in tournaments but I better analyse them on a separate post.

From the Micromillions I only played the main event (and another $5 tourney but I can hardly remember it). It is  really nice to see that Pokerstars smashed the guarantee $1,150m prizepool is huge :D

As a cash player, I have to admit that it does affect me as well when these big tournaments take place. The cash games are good. And by good I mean tooooo gooooood!!!!
I have decided that I will always be around during these tournaments. (and promise not to play the tournaments!!)

I had my coaching session on Friday. During the session I am always more than 100% concentrated. As a result I can hardly do anything after the coaching. I have started making graphs with my ranges against different type of opponents and situations. It has proven to be very helpful but I have been told to reduce the number of my tables until I am super comfortable with every position/ spot. So I have dropped from 6-8 to 4-6 tables.

I managed to squeeze a little session on Friday where I won a stack, but shortly after that I was tired and couldn't play my best so I stopped.
I didn't have the time to grind as much as I would like to during the weekend but my sessions were more than good. I was running above 50bb/100. I was only playing small sessions so I am not a millionaire from 25NL.

Here are some interesting hands where I wasn't expecting to get max value:

In both spots I couldn't believe that they called with these hands. 

I had my unlucky spots too but sometimes I don't mind. See the hand below first :

After some raises I managed to get the short stack to put his money in on the flop with AJo vs my flopped nuts with a straight flush redraw too! Oh well, it's one of these spots where you don't mind losing. The guy lost his (half) stack a few hands later anyway.

I opened to 2.5x, the guy with the 97 calls with a stack of $2.35 and the AK guy 3bet to $2 and had $12 behind. Given their stats and stacks I am not folding 1010s on that spot! Yeh, another spot where I didn't win but it's not the end of the world.

I can't think of any other funny spots but you can see it was a gg ;)

I am going to rail my friend who's deep in the MM main event, casually has 3x the average during the whole tournament.  Hopefully, next time I see him he will be buying the drinks (hint hint).

Guys, best of luck at the tables. :)   

Happy swingy weekend

Hello everyone,

the title describes exactly how my weekend was.

I had a losing session on Saturday but turned to be a nice opportunity.
On Saturday i woke up early and was in a pretty "grindy" mood. I was playing for less than 30 minutes when the following 3 hands happened almost at the same time:

• AA vs QQ (he flopped quads)
• 1010s vs QQ (same guy), I turned a set, he rivered a set
• 77s vs 1010s we both flopped a set on a 10K7r flop

Lost 3 stacks in 4 minutes and I was... :(

I know all hands were sort of coolers but I was worried that this can affect my mood and I could lose way much more $$$. So I closed all my tables and start browsing random things. And the good things happened!!!

I found Celeste's blog which can be found here. She plays cash games too and I was really really happy not only to find a cash blog but also from a girl around my age! How nice is that?
To many of you this might not sound so interesting but being a girl it kinda makes it difficult to find other girls who play poker and are interested in the game.  I am not going to analyse more the pros and cons of being a girl in this men dominated community as this is really loooong story.

I also found a lot of interesting blogs from cash players and that means I have to do a lot of reading, but I am excited about it.  24h on a day seem not to be enough to do all the things I want to!

My Sunday was much better in terms of profit. Here's my graph from the day:

I do not have the time to play as much as I would like to due to my job, but I recently started playing more tables and I like the results.
I used to play 4tables and I was making a lot of loose moves, which I found them correct at the time.
I realised that I was overanalysing the stats from HEM. When I went to facebook and twitter while I was playing I said to myself that I HAVE to add more tables.

So now, I am playing 6 & 7 tables comfortably, and without feeling for a second under pressure or being too loose.

I can't explain it, but I am feeling so motivated to put some extra work and effort in my game.
All day i am in a super good mood ( you can tell too?) and looking forward to play more, study more and everything else that is necessary to become better.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to review my hands from the weekend (but will do soon) so I won't be posting any hands for the moment.

Best of luck at the tables :)

Morning sessions

Helloooo,

I have few interesting hands to post and new things to write about. I started doing some review and homework, but I couldn't concentrate 100%, probably not even 50%, so there was no point to continue studying. I am pushing myself a little a bit to stay awake as I have to finish this post but I also want to wake up early tomorrow.

I was a little fed up with my sleeping patterns but I have improved a lot during my holidays, so I want to carry on like that. It makes me feel better after all.

The target would be to wake up around 8:30-9:00 and have at least 2 hours sessions during the day (i am leaving some room to oversleep)

Today's session was only for an hour as i had some other things to do. The traffic during the daytime is a bit different to what I am used to. There were more solid players and the bad players were...not there. Alright, it wasn't that bad as it sounds, I only find harder to table select. The tables with the shorties were full and the empty seats were having big stacks on their left. No thanks, I 'd rather wait a little a bit.

The biggest pot I won  was with 76o (on a blind v blind spot). I 've turned a full house and on a relatively small pot the other guy leads out the river for almost 2.5x pot. Happy days :)

Biggest pot I lost was on a HU spot (I love playing HU btw). It is quite rare to play HU with an opponent for more than 10 hands on a 6max table. But for some reason nobody was joining our game and we had a nice HU session with that guy. He is a reg and made me feel more comfortable to play with him as I was certain he won't hit and run me.

I am not happy with my play even if it looks as a standard cooler. He wasn't play crazy or making too many out of order moves and that hand he played so straight forward that i think i should have folded the river. But on the other hand oh well....I am not sure if it is +ev spot to call there with 1010s.

I was searching for any poker blogs from cash players. I know blogging it it becoming a bit old school but seriously? Nothing? There must be some people who play cash games and write about it. All the decent blogs that I have found so far are from MTT/SNG players. However, I enjoy reading them too, just i skip the icm comments.

Time for me to have some rest now and be fresh for the weekend grind.
Good luck at the tables.

Back from holidays!!

Hello everyone,

I am back!!! I was off for almost 3 weeks, I had a great time but to be to honest I missed poker a little a bit.

I went on holidays in Greece and Italy. The weather was really hot, almost too hot for my taste.
Before I go I had loaded my ipad with a ton of poker books and training videos.
As you remember I was doing a lot of studying before I go on holidays, so my first days in Athens i was still studying and reading my books.
However, it was impossible to carry on studying when I had so many thing to do, friends to catch up and places to go to. I am not going to take that as a failure to study just I need now to dust off my poker knowledge a little.

Back to the grind

I came back home on Tuesday afternoon, i had planned to do all the little jobs at home on Tuesday and start playing on Wednesday.  

I watched a few videos as a warm-up and booked my coaching session for next week ( I need to put some volume otherwise we ll have nothing to review). 

I put in plan the 1h sessions and started playing earlier on today. So far, I had 2 small sessions.I am down, just under a stack, but I feel good about it. 

I started with 2 tables to see how I can respond to that but very shortly after I found my-self very distracted from other things so I added 2 more tables and played really comfortably.

After reviewing my hands, the only play I made and I didn't like was when I stacked off a shorty when I had AAs. To many people this might sound standard but I think I could have saved me $5-7 on that pot. 

I bet $1.75 on the turn and he min raised me to $3.50.Obviously, this shouts "2 pairs" and I know I shouldn't have raised him. Even if I called his raise on the turn I could x/f the river. Oh well, at least he didn't have a full stack.

Another small pot I lost is this : 

I was the initial raiser, bet the flop, check the turn and bet /call river. Another hand where I beat nothing. 

I don't think he ever min raises the river as a bluff or he does that with a hand that I beat. 

Both hands are not that big of pots but I cannot do that type of mistakes all the time unless I want to go broke (which is not the case). 

This was meant to be my hour off the tables to have lunch but I ll probably have to take another hour off. 

I hope to manage to add another 2 sessions before I meet my friend later on tonight. 

Good luck at the tables :)

Holidays break

Hi everyone,

I haven't been playing much since my last post and i don't think i ll play any more until my holidays.
I had a tiny session yesterday where i lost a stack and i felt like i didn't want to play more.

The hand i lost is nothing interesting, i had AAs otb, i 6bet shoved and sb snap calls me with KKs. For a second i was happy to see him having KKs but a K came on the flop. It's not big of a deal that i lost with AA vs KK just i felt that i need some time of the tables.

Plus my holidays are coming up in a few days and i got quite a few things to do before i go.

Soooooo we are not giving up because we caught up with variance. I ll be spending more time studying and watching training videos. I have found some interesting poker blogs too to read but not cash game blogs. (any suggestions always welcome).

Also, i want to find out what my optimal playing time is. As a live player i have had really long sessions, with breaks in between obviously. I haven't figured out yet how long i should be playing before i take a break. At the moment, i am finishing a session when i am feeling tired or when i feel that i play bad. But, until i realise that i have been playing bad or i made bad decisions, i have already lost a portion of my winnings and i don't think this approach is worth it.  

I ll start experimenting with 1h sessions and see how this will work. Plan is to take a small break after playing an hour, maybe do some hand review and will continue playing only if i feel i can play my best.
(this has to be added to my targets for the month)

That's it for now i think. I ll be posting more updates when i ll be back from holidays.

Good luck with your grinding.

Intro

Hello everyone, 

So I will be working mostly on 25NL, 6max cash games on Pokerstars. 

At the moment i am playing 4-6 regular speed tables or 2 Zoom tables at the time. 

My goals for the month : NONE i ll be on holidays till 15th of July. 

So, my goals for the end of August would be : 

• play 15-20 hours a week online and play 1-2 sessions live a week 
• start winning some $$$ and make a decent graph

At the moment, i want to analyse more my hand ranges against different type of villains and work more on their stats from holdem manager. 

My coach gave me a new hud set-up which i am trying to learn that at the moment. We have added more "steal" stats and pre flop tendencies for now. Already i was struggling to adjust to that as where i used to have my 3bet stats i now have steal stats and a few times i made decisions looking in the wrong numbers. 

My biggest pot i lost today was : -$26.85 

It was a standard play AK vs KK all in preflop 

Not the best board ever but not much we could do about it. 

I am going to add another session before lunch as i will be going out tonight. More results to follow. 

 

First post!

Hello Everyone, 

I have written a million different intros and i still don't know how to start. 

Writting a blog and publishing your thoughts might not be so easy as it seems.

Alright, let me start with introducing myself and the plan of this blog. My name is Maria and i have been playing poker for several years now. All these years while i was learning the game, i have to admit, it wasn't profitable all the times. 

So i have decided to take things seriously and creating this blog, i hope it will help me more to keep a track of my progress and don't bust another roll.  

I used to play live poker in my local casino for the past year and a half now. Online poker wasn't always my thing as I am not the most disciplined person.

Grinding live can work both ways, you can make a ton of money overnight or lose a ton of money in half an hour! However, it needs way much less effort to play (and win) in a live game. I think i ll come back to my live experiences in another post.....

Well, the past month i took the decision to start some coaching with a professional online grinder. 

I ll need to ask my coach if he is okay to include his name in here. :) I am following him for quite some time now and i always liked his style and approach to the game, so i contacted him and we started working on my game. 

Yesterday, i had my second coaching session. I have to admit that i was totally exhausted at the end and decided not to play any poker yesterday. I wake up fresh today and in a very good and grinding mood. 

But i had another losing session, so instead of browsing random things on the internet i thought to make a blog and hopefully things will work better. (fingers crossed)

I will be trying to put updates of my progress for most of my sessions, i think it will help me way much more if i have to write things down and doing a little hand review at the time. 

I feel i have already written too much for my first post. Any advice and comments on my play are always welcome!