John Major plays poker

[Charlie44]

[s4ooter]

Aha!! John Major!!

Good Luck in your goals, i will be following intently!

Dann/Tim/Bilbo

[Zozzy]

Your introduction makes interesting reading. The path from chess to poker is one that quite a few top professionals have trod, hopefully you can follow in their footsteps.
Also  it is great that you have set yourself poker goals because this is important.
All the best Mike in your poker journey.

[CW86]

Gl mike, will be looking forward to hearing how u are getting on

[Newportlad]

Best of luck with this Mike.

Look forward to regular updates on this.

[Santino67]

Nice reading Mike, look forward to reading more and sharing a table at some point in the near future.

Grant/Fat Charlie Sheen

[Charlie44]

Many thanks all for the kind words of interest and support. I "ll try to keep you updated.

Had my first day online today to try and meet September target. Not very successful I"m afraid.

I plan to play 24 days per month. Converting the monthly targets into daily targets - I would need to play 1250 hands,  achieve profit on showdown hand before bonuses (rakeback) of $10 per day, and achive nil profit on non showdown hands.

I actually played 10 cents zoom for 4.5 hours and played 1253 hands which achieved target.

My showdown profit was $6.42 (compared to $10) which I am not too concerned about because obviously there tends to be big variance on a daily basis.

More concerning is my continuing trend with a $9 loss on non showdown hands (giving an overall loss for the day of $2.58) . I intend spending a while investigating this, togther my big hands from todays session, early evening tomorrow, before another similar session starting about 7 tomorrow.

[AAroddersAA]

Good as you wish luck with your goals Mike. I will post my thoughts, feel free to use them or ignore them as you wish

30K hands is a lot, are you 6-max or FR? I am always careful with volume goals, they are fine as long as you know that if you are playing badly and need to take a break (and this happens to us all) then it is OK not to hit the volume goal. I tend to just aim for Silverstar but if you have more time then a volume target is fine.

The non-showdown issue is one I have had myself, and still get from time to time. In my experience I tend to get a red line that is sliding downwards when I am playing too mechanically (AKA too tight). When I am trying to play too many tables for example or not really focusing on the game. This usually leads to me not 3-betting enough (and just calling instead), not double barreling against the correct players, not making notes, not stealing on the river when it is correct to do so and not stealing the blinds enough. I have spent quite a bit of time on this with help from better players (including Noble1 on here). To find the actual leaks it is worth reviewing a session and posting the following stats:-

VP$IP:
PFR:
3-bet:
Fold to 3-Bet:
Attempt to Steal from Button:
Attempt to Steal from SB:

Also spend some time with your Poker Tracker and have a notepad and pen during the session so you can make a quick note of hands you want to look back through at the end of the session, try posting some of the hand on then Strategy section here or the PHA on Blonde. Do this even if it is just to check on your thinking. You need to look at not just the hands with the big pots as these are not what affect your red line but spots where maybe you should bluff when you didn"t or maybe you should barrel the turn and didn"t. Also be careful not to focus too much on the red line, the green line is more important.

If you want to and think it will help I would be happy for you to watch me play a bit of $10nl Zoom / non Zoom on Teamviewer. I am not going to claim to be a great player but I have been profitable in this game although on by 2BB/100 this year.

If you have time have a read through this thread, it is long and will take a few weeks but is worth it as it has a lot of great hands from $10nl Zoom included.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=56559.0

[TheSnapper]

Best of luck with your efforts.

Some observations though, I"m not sure why you have broken your target up into showdown/non showdown AKA Blue line / red line. I suspect it"s due to the popular misconception that that a positive non showdown indicates you are a good aggressive player. Winning players with positive red lines are rare and the biggest factor in sd/nsd winnings is how your opponents play.

I think this will put undue pressure on your game and your focus will likely gravitate towards winning pots without showdown. Especially at 10nl where most of your value comes from getting paid when you have it rather than trying to get calling stations to fold.

The bottom line is bb"s/100 and I"ve found it useful to try and understand "what good looks like" ie: ...

0 -+3 = Good
+3 - +7= really good
> +7   = crushing

Those numbers are for micro stakes and when you play beyond 100nl you could probably halve those numbers but it"s decent guideline.

Say you play 2 hours 4 tabling a 10 cent game and play 600 hands, you win $1.80 for the session, doesn"t seem like much of an achievement and we can sometimes feel bad about that but in reality, doing this consistently puts us in the top 5% of players for that level.



Would you be worried about this red line if you had a + $260k year?

Disclaimer: Sadly this not my graph :"(

[Charlie44]

feel free to use them or ignore them as you wish

To find the actual leaks it is worth reviewing a session and posting the following stats

try posting some of the hand on then Strategy section here  

I would be happy for you to watch me play a bit of $10nl Zoom

If you have time have a read through this thread,

Steve - many thanks for taking the time to post this. It looks as if you have gone through the same sort of issues that I will no doubt be going through. I will definitely not be ignoring your tips. Good ideas I think to post stats and hands and I will be definitely doing that. I will definitely be taking you up on your offer at some time to watch you on 10 nl zoom. The blonde thread also looks good and very relevant.

Be back in touch soon. Thanks again.

[Charlie44]

I"m not sure why you have broken your target up into showdown/non showdown AKA Blue line / red line.

Winning players with positive red lines are rare.


BB/100
> +7   = crushing

Many thanks for you comments. They have been very thought provoking and have convinced me at least for now to remove the target of non showdown winnings. Winning players with positive lines are rare is certainly an interesting fact. However I still think that the continuous downward trend of my non showdown winnings is an indication of certain areas of my game which need improving if I am to be very effective at this level and higher.

I"ve been trying to think outside the box on this issue as I try and do. Consider if you had perfect information. i.e you had knew exactly your opponents cards, you may take the following strategy :

When you are ahead betting the maximum you believe you opponent would call. When you are behind only call your opponent bets if you had the odds to call. If your opponents always called your bets then clearly you would be making a good overall profit but you would be making a big non showdown loss.

You could almost certainly improve your non showdown and overall profit by betting or raising enough to make your opponent fold when he has a poor or marginal hand albeit better then you.

The point I am making is that whilst as you rightly said there is nothing to worry about with a non showdown loss there is always room to improving your game and if you are making a big loss on non showdown hands maybe that"s where the main room for improvement is.


By the way my +8 BB/100 may be a bit ambitious then !! I"d rather be aiming high though !

Thanks again.

[s4ooter]

I dont think  its too bad....i used to play 4 x NL5/NL10 Zoom tables (6max) and over 30k hands had a win rate of 11bb/100 hands (~$250)

You"ll get there, just make sure you review, review, review and take advantage of your HUD etc.

Lower stakes, be aggressive.

[Charlie44]

I dont think  its too bad....i used to play 4 x NL5/NL10 Zoom tables (6max) and over 30k hands had a win rate of 11bb/100 hands (~$250)

You"ll get there, just make sure you review, review, review and take advantage of your HUD etc.

Lower stakes, be aggressive.

Thanks for the advice - REVIEW, USE YOUR HUD, and BE AGRESSIVE - I think I need to need to have that as my motto.

Having an amazing session today so far 858 hands played $39.65 up including 15$ up on non showdown hands. Apprecaite I should not be results orientated and will be reviewing tomorrow how badly I played some hands. Just had a satisfying hand - raised to 3BB co with 77, looked like a reg with 50 bbs on button 3 bet to 9bbs. Looked like he was taking advantage of pos so I just shoved and he folded like a baby - felt good !!.

[Charlie44]

Promise I wont report every day but very pleased with the days results.

1098 hands played on 10cents zoom.
$39.58 profit including $15 non showdown.

Yesssss!

Hands played slightly down on target because I took a break to watch the first episode of the new series of Doc Martin. I"m not normally into sitcoms but the wife and I really enjoy this. She"s pleased ( I think) because at least she"ll see me for 1 hour in the evenings every week !!

[duke3016]

Post as often as you desire  

Don"t pretend to understand all the figures   but it does interest me and a lot of people on here, keep it up...