Here’s a few goals for getting started up again

1. Be more aggressive postflop. Being a showdown monkey is cool, and effective. However, I need to find more spots to 3! the turn, put in a bluff/re-bluff to a barrel, and find some folds with made hands that are definitely beat.

2. Notetaking. This is the big one, at the lower limits, the player pool is so large that I thought notetaking was a waste of time since I never sat with the same players. Once I got to 2/4, there was a reg on almost every table, but I didn’t have a good notetaking system to take find leaks.

3. Watch Cbeting. I basically cbet 95% of the time, and try to cbet 100% hu and 3 handed. I need to watch my cbets vs more than 2 villians and low boards that I will get checkraised on all the time. Basically I need to be cbetting more for value than just balance, like if I raise JT in CO and BTN cold calls and the BB comes along too and the board flops 356 with a FD, theres just no way I should be cbetting there. BB could have a lot of foldable hands, but unless BTN cc range is huge, its always going to include a large part of small-mid PP and Ax which makes my equity crap and FE is non-existent. It’ll only be a small adjustment, maybe drop to 85-90% cbet, but if I continue to LAG it up prf (32/27) too often I’m going to be throwing away a sb or 2 with a bad flop cbet.

3a. I know this contradicts with goal 1 but it goes along with the thought that I need to start making more decisions instead of cruising along with standard raise, cbet, showdown lines.

4. Cashout. I want poker to be my side job. That’s my longterm goal. I know the worst thing you can do to your bankroll while building it is cashing out, but if I never cashout I’m not sure if I’ll get that feeling that I’m beign rewarded for my time. In the past, I’ve just cashed out randomly usually after hot streaks or donkstriking a MTT, but I think I’ve made mistakes there by cashing out too much at a time or gone on long streaks of not cashing out at all. By now I’ve cashed out enough to recoup my deposits, the books i’ve bought, PT3, Table Ninja, a few months of a DC membership, and if I ever want to do a redeposit bonus, I won’t feel bad dipping back into my bank account.

After all that, here is my strategy. Cashout 50 big bets of whatever level I have at least 350 big bets for every 10k hands. If I move up quickly or really start grinding again I may change this to 100 big bets every 20k hands of a 500 big bet BR in order to curb variance. For now the original cashout strategy will work. I will need to maintain a .5 bb/100 winrate to breakeven and my previous WR was over 2 bb/100 through 40k hands at .5/1 and 1/2.

For next time… Actual poker. I’ve actually had a little trouble starting to play again for some reason. I have a wedding to attend this weekend, but starting next week, I will begin grinding. I have a nice job for playing poker, I just need to sit down and start.

Poker Stars $2/$4 Limit Hold’em – 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is CO with Q 8
1 fold, Hero raises, 1 fold, SB 3-bets, 1 fold, Hero calls

Flop: (7 SB) A A 9 (2 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls

Turn: (7.5 BB) J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, SB calls

River: (9.5 BB) 9 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Final Pot: 9.5 BB
Hero shows Q 8 (two pair, Aces and Nines – Queen kicker)
SB shows 6 8 (two pair, Aces and Nines)
Hero wins 9.25 BB
(Rake: $1.00)

Sick call

Poker Stars $1/$2 Limit Hold’em – 6 players – View hand 154202

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is SB with T J

4 folds, Hero raises, BB calls

Flop: (4 SB) K 2 K (2 players)

Hero bets, BB raises, Hero calls

Turn: (4 BB) 3 (2 players)

Hero bets, BB raises, Hero calls

River: (8 BB) 3 (2 players)

Hero checks, BB bets, Hero calls

Final Pot: 10 BB

Hero shows T J (two pair, Kings and Threes – Jack kicker)

BB shows 7 T (two pair, Kings and Threes)

Hero wins 9.625 BB

(Rake: $0.75)

wow, I pretty much think both of these conversions suck, anybody use one that works well with this site?

I’m currently on about a month long break from poker after hitting Star’s bonuses last month and cashing out. Essentially, I’m somewhat starting over since I’m moving down from 2/4 to .5/1. My BR is pretty close to 1/2 but since I haven’t played in a while I want to log some W’s before I start moving back up. I’m making this blog to track my trials and tribulations through the online poker world. I’m not a great writer and in general I’m pretty scatterbrained so I’m not sure how well this will read, but I’ll work on it. Hopefully I’ll make some good jokes and since most of you probably play NL perhaps this will be a nice change of pace.