Hi I'm Para. My pokerstars account is primming.
I've been a low stakes player for a while and now I want to move up in stakes. I started off playing husngs and transitioned to spin and gos when they were released. My biggest problem I think is not playing enough and studying too much. I've set a goal to play as many $7 spin and gos until the end of the year and if I have good results move up to the $15s. I have some confidence that I can move up but I think I need a much bigger bankroll to do so.
I promise to stick with this blog this time and not give up like I did previously. Recently I've changed my mindset about poker from a hobby to something I want to succeed in.
My goals until December 31st:
- Profit at least $1000
- Maintain 39%+ ITM
Chip graph:
Profits:
Does anyone know how tough the $15 spins are?
When I moved from $3s to $7s I was expecting the games to get harder but nothing really changed so I was glad with my decision. I guess people try a bit harder to win at the $7s but most of my opponents still play very predictably. I'm wondering if these population tendencies remain at the $15s.
I'm planning to move to the $15s with a 100 buyin bankroll ($1500). I want to move up quickly but I hope this is enough. Well I guess I could always move back down to play the $7s.
Any advice is appreciated!
Congrats on the potential move up.
As long as you're willing to move down if you're losing (predetermine how much you're willing to lose before a move down, whether it's 20 buyins or 40 buyins) you should be OK.
100 is a bit thin, so I would likely move down at 80 buyins (so you have 160 for the $7s then), variance can be a real drag, though the higher your edge, the less likely a big negative downswing will occur.
As far as difficulty, from talking with many players, my opinion would be that it will be more difficult on average, but mostly because you'll find more competent players in some of your games. The average non regular player is going to be basically as bad as what you're used to, you'll just see some more players that actually are working on doing this for a living like yourself and moving up the stakes.
That said, don't expect it to be incredibly difficult either, as long as you work hard and improve and play focused poker, you should have a good shot to continue moving up the ladder.
Sounds like a good plan. Thanks for your advice it motivates me a lot.
A little more than 20 days to go and currently about a third of the way there in winnings. A bit behind schedule, but I could get lucky.
EV ITM is around 38.5%, so close to 39%!
Now that I think about it a winnings goal for a little over a month is probably a bad idea. Next time I should do a volume and ITM goal instead.
I haven't studied in a while and I can definitely see it affecting my play. My routine is to review yesterday's games that I lost and study spots where I tend to lose the most money. I'm getting this mindset where, since I'm winning money, I don't want to try different approaches. I think this comes from only playing and I need to balance this with more studying.
I've been employing a limp-stab strategy 8-15bbs that has worked extremely well against passive people who don't isoshove enough. But I am incorrectly using this vs tight players where I should be min-raising instead and vs maniacs who keep shoving over and yet I continue limp-folding my chips away. Autopiloting preflop hands has cost me a ton of chips.
Overall I'm pretty glad about this whole thing. I think I've learnt a lot. I realized it doesn't really matter if I reach my goal or not. What matters is that I keep improving as a player. Over these games I feel like I have moved up a level, but this will only be a feeling until I actually move up in stakes so wish me luck!
Nice, keep working. I like the idea of a volume goal, as long as it is quality volume. Adding EV in is pretty good as well.
Just keep improving as you're working towards, it should pay off well.
Big downswing :(
I still have confidence though.
I will get through this!
That's the spirit!
Share some more details when you're comfortable, but keep on working through. Clear headed volume is key.
I don't think I played any worse because of the downswing. It did affect me though. Confidence is pretty big and a downswing sometimes takes it away from you.
Will be posting results later tonight. Have been doing pretty well!
Checked my database today and I am negative in chips in the SB position when 3 handed!
It's the position that I think is the most tricky but I wonder if it's supposed to be negative at all? Or maybe I'm just using pokertracker incorrectly and filtering it wrong. BB position was positive for me and BU roughly double of that.
Generally both SB and BB will be slightly negative (occasionally slightly positive for some players) when 3-handed, BU will be in the 20-30bb/100 region. Things to think about in terms of if you set it up correctly. Did you use effective stack filtering? If you did then it will ruin your results because hands where play folds round to the BB count as effective stacks 0. Did you filter correctly for 3-handed? You should be using "number of players dealt into hand min 3 max 3" in the hand details section. Lastly sample size needs to be big to get meaningful data--you'd like to have 10k+ hands per position if not more to get super reliable data. If you only have like 1k for each position this will limit how much you can gain by looking at this data.
I checked again and I think I filtered it right this time and got the same result.
I was surprised to see that the majority of chips made from games is actually when the game is heads up. This is good to know because I have been focusing much more on studying heads up than 3 handed play.
3 handed: 991 BB won (13733 hands)
Heads up: 2614 BB won (16656 hands)