Demondoink

having two 9s blocks IP's rivered 9x (hands that would x back) so you end up unblocking more hands like top pair or second pair that would value bet when x to, or low card bluffs that will also bet (sometimes) when x to.

if you had a hand like QQ you would be much better to bet yourself, cos now you block his top pair value bets and don't block the x back range (which means IP will bet less often when x to). 99 has the opposite effect.

JoeAdams1 welcome back, hadn't seen you at the tables in a while until last night, where have you been?

yeah that's a good point but the issue is that the UK have different clients to EU etc. so if i deposit on to GG, for example, then i need to open up a new account with them for the duration of my time in Europe, then go back to my old UK one when i return. so it wouldn't make much of a difference, though i could play it whilst i am here of course.

it's weird though cos on Stars i can still play when in Hungary on their UK client, but i can't do the same on GG (and this is a site that doesn't seem to give a fuck about restrictions etc haha). so i'm not sure how that works :P

it's kind of like trying to become a pro tennis player, but then you spend half of your time training to become a pro badminton player. sure, they are similar, but they are still massively different, and time spent training at badminton could be time spent training for tennis, and vice versa. so until you are a really good 'tennis' or 'badminton' player, you shouldn't be trying to become both.

Horkitorki14 no you shouldn't, unless you wanna focus on mtt's instead of cash games. until you are really good at one variant and making a consistent income, then why would you designate a bunch of time/effort to studying/playing the other? that is just going to eat in to your WR for the primary focus.

thanks man, will do! gonna try more new things this week cos i have got my bearings of the city now and i am (kind of) getting used to the very warm weather haha.

JJisnoob yeah i know i always think of depositing but then i just open the Stars lobby and fire up some tables haha. i played on ipoker last year or something, but ended up withdrawing my money cos i felt like the games were basically just regs and no fish. though i have heard that it is a pretty soft site overall, so i should probably give that another shot. GG rake is too high (and i can't really deposit any reasonable amount on there) and i have played on party poker at the zoom games but those regs are weird and i wouldn't be shocked if many are bots tbh.

i've heard that ACR is soft, so i think i will give that one a shot as well as ipoker another try. what sites do you normally play on? iirc you play on quite a few.

good luck. however i would say that your ONLY goal just now should be to learn how execute proper bankroll management. it doesn't matter how good you are, or how often you exercise, meditate etc if you are playing under rolled. even with your new goals to drop down to NL50, you still don't have enough buy ins to play that stake, you should be playing NL25.

you remind me of my old flat mate who had around a $20k roll and was playing higher buy ins than me during SCOOP (despite the fact that my roll at the time was several x that) and ended up needing a late $10k or so bink to stop him from busting his entire roll.

you are not a gambler. you are chasing a 'quick fix' to move up the stakes as quickly as possible, which is why you are playing mtt's and going for that big score despite never studying them. i mean a $75 abi for somebody who has no history of being profitable in them is way too high.

i probably took too long to move up in stakes, but it is much better slowly moving up whilst you study, improve, gain mental resilience etc than it is to gamble completely under rolled in the hope of binking something. if you are in to poker for these reasons, then you are not a poker player but more of a degenerate gambler.

sorry if this sounds harsh, but this is the reality. poker is not a glamourous game. it's about the daily slog, of winning AND losing, but by utilising proper BRM we limit our chances of risk of ruin and going busto.

this is what i would advise you to do;

cash games- 40 buy ins then move up. move back down when you drop back down below this mark.

tournaments 100 buy ins. play no more than 6 tables. you have no record of being profitable at them, so until you have proved this, keep the table count low and focus on making good decisions.

also i would advise you to focus on one or the other. there is a saying in the UK that goes 'jack of all trades, master of none.' you don't want to be the person who can do lots of things, but do all of them to a mediocre standard. decide if you wanna pursue cash games OR tournaments. you can't do both. again, you have no history of winning at either yet and have only recently gone professional. it seems like you are better at cash games, so i would stick with that until you have closer to a $40k roll, then perhaps you can play a few tournaments on a Sunday alongside your cash game grind. however, until you get closer to $100k i wouldn't advise dedicating Sunday's exclusively to mtt's unless you are prepared to play low stakes. cos the problem is that by even just playing $100 mtt's, you could easily lose $2-3k per Sunday and start eating in to your cash game profits pretty quickly.

anyways, hopefully my advice is useful. i started off in mtt's around 9 years ago and should have just played cash. mtt's are very tough for the mind, especially when you are not staked or have backers etc, so i would go for cash games as there is much less variance and it's not nearly as stressful imo. sure, it will take longer to move up (cos you won't get a big bink) but you can bring in a fairly consistent income, and slowly improve in the process.

good luck, and if i were you i would reach out to other people in your games to see if they wanna study together, or other people playing similar stakes in these forums. there are always tons of people willing to study, but sometimes you have to make the first move!

i really like the way that you play, very impressive! you seem to have a good balance between theory based poker, but are also willing to deviate when you feel necessary (for example in the A2o hand).

at the end you said that the sim didn't accurately reflect how population play (which i agree on). so why didn't you just exclude the small click back sizing and only give the OOP player the option to go all in vs the raise? usually in my sims (albeit at cash games) i just exclude the click backs on later streets and only give all ins, cos i never see anybody doing them.

your sims also seem insanely complicated to study given how many sizing's you offer. are you just doing this to find the optimal sizing's on each street, or you are attempting to play a turn strategy, for example, that includes four different sizing's?

Update:

it's crazy but i have been here for almost a week already. after a hectic few days that involved packing up all my stuff from my old flat, finishing cleaning it and moving my possessions back to my parents, i was then flying to Budapest just two days later. my flight was at 9pm on Tuesday, but it was delayed slightly and then i had to queue for over an hour to get through passport security as the UK is no longer in the EU. before it was a breeze to get through, but now it takes quite a while (as i'm almost always flying from the UK, so there are many other passengers who are in the same situation and thus why the hold up is so long). i think it would be much faster between two EU countries, for example.

i have managed to get my bearings and now kinda know my way around the centre. so far i've been up to the liberty statue, that has great views over the city, have been to the parliament, went to Margaret Island a couple of times and in general just done a ton of walking. temperatures each day usually hit around 30c, which is crazy as i'm used to about half of that haha. it's going to be interesting when i begin my marathon training within the next month :P

this week i want to go to Memento Park, to see the old communist statues etc, and to the thermal baths. i'll probably head out of Budapest soon and visit some other towns or cities as well, and go in to the Buda Hills for some longer walks.

i'm not gonna lie it's pretty weird travelling/living alone. i believe this is the first time that i have gone abroad myself (bar the time i caught a flight and then went to stay at my friends in Holland) and also the first time that i have lived alone (bar a couple month spell in Edinburgh in between flat mates). overall i'd say its much better doing things with company, but i don't want that to hold me back from travelling abroad, or going to new places cos then i am reliant on other people in order to do things. so i just have to accept it and make the most of my time here. on a plus note, i am getting through a lot of reading and being more productive as each day goes by.

i was planning on making this post longer but i have coaching in five minutes and don't want to be late. after the coaching i'm meeting up with a poker friend, but i'm not sure what we are doing yet. i have also been on a heater since arriving in Budapest, so long may that continue! the only downside is that it's difficult to get volume in on Stars rn, especially at 500z+. my friend highlighted how i am procrastinating about depositing on other sites (which is true). so as soon as i return to Scotland i will get set up on some other sites as well, cos grinding on Stars alone is becoming less and less feasible by the day.

GG, and have a nice week! if anyone else lives or is visiting Budapest, drop me a message and we can arrange to meet up :)

okay cool thanks for the recommendations. when did you go and visit there?

i'm not sure yet as i only just decided today to go, but it might be a package for a bunch of events. like $10-15k of action and then just sell half of that or something. will need to have a think. if i bink a tournament online before then, perhaps i'll just gamble and go for it all myself! haha.

will keep people updated once i book flights etc and decide what i am playing exactly.

why don't you come and play too? ;)

zache86 cheers mate! i feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders now as i've moved out of my flat (which is always stressful) and also basically packed for Budapest. just gotta find a small case tomorrow as i'm planning on taking my PC tower through as hand luggage lol. i thought that would make the most sense as it would be the least likely way to get damaged. the PC basically just needs to last the trip cos when i come back to the UK i'm going to buy a new once as it must be at least four years old and it's getting slower and slower.

yeah i don't think we are able to fully detach and analyse our own poker performance properly, especially when we have the frustration etc of losing a lot of money in the process. i can still judge relatively well how i've played whether winning or losing, but we are human, so we will still also be swayed by how our session went in terms of profit/loss. but as Jason Somerville used to say- poker is just one long poker session. so it doesn't matter really in the end, each session is just a part of the session of our poker careers :)

haha yeah its funny cos i made this kind of ridiculous x call with K high on the river in a 3bet pot last week and was shown a value hand, so my hand looked stupid. but i had my reasons for doing so, and a little adjustment in node locking showed that my hand would actually be a +EV call with the correct parameters (which were very realistic). so there is sometimes a very thin line between looking like a genius and a moron :D

exactly! it's dangerous to go through our lives on auto pilot when there is so much to experience in this world. let's make the most of it!

Hey guys. quick update as i need to get packing before i leave for Budapest tomorrow. i've decided to go and play in my first ever EPT, in Prague in December. the series runs from the 7th-18th of December, so i will probably just go for the entire duration and play some of the smaller buy ins too. i've been to a lot of countries in Europe but never been to Czech Republic before, so i am going to kill two birds with one stone by playing in the EPT and also visiting the country.

i might end up selling some action, just cos the variance in a live mtt is so high and i don't usually play $5k buy in tournaments haha. obviously it's going to be very soft though, so i'm clearly going to be crushing in that field. so i will post about that later down the line if anyone is interested in taking a piece of me.

is anyone else planning on going there? would be cool to meet up with other people from the blog etc as i have only played a couple of live tournaments lifetime, so don't really know many live poker players. obviously me going is dependent on whether they bring back in any covid restrictions etc, so hopefully they are all gone by then and we can just play some poker!

RunItTw1ce hey man nice to hear from you! haha i do love a David Goggins quote. i hope that he goes back on the Joe Rogan podcast again soon cos i've loved his previous pods on there. i feel like Joe Rogans recent ones haven't been as interesting, i often find myself going back through his older ones and listening to one of them instead.

yeah i seen Luke's video, i watch all of them! tbh i can't really recall many specific hands from it, but it doesn't surprise me that people continuously show down value whenever they bet the river. it's kind of easy to understand why due to the flawed nature of the human mind.

Humans don't like losing money, cos money buys food, pays for shelter etc and keeps us alive>bluffing risks 'losing' money cos we are going all in to effectively win $0 pot share> thus we often chicken out and avoid this risk.

where as on the other hand-

we need money to pay for things, we like making more money than we had before> value betting makes us money, betting is making more $ than checking> thus we feel very comfortable value betting on the river.

so from a mindset perspective, value betting IS ALWAYS going to be far more comfortable for a human mind than bluffing is. even for a crazy bluffer, if they have the nuts at 300bb deep they are going to happily go all in, but if they have a bluff they will at least consider their options, even if they do have the balls to pull the trigger.

then you also have to factor in that many people don't even know what combos to bluff with as they don't study enough, or don't focus enough of their study towards finding the bluff combos.

so that's why i would say around 80-90% of players are under bluffing, and probably only around 5% are over bluffing. this is obviously just ball park numbers, but i'd say that it is fairly accurate. of course this doesn't apply to all spots, perhaps 50% of the population over bluff on the T probe line etc, but i am speaking overall across all lines.

with that in mind, you should really be folding most of the time to river bets, but then i see the mdf monsters under the bed and end up calling anyways lol. so that's something i need to work on, as i am also a victim of my emotions (my fear of not defending enough of my range otr) even when my rational mind knows that my opponent is almost certainly under bluffing this spot/node.

it's funny you tend to think you played much worse than you actually did. of the big pots that i lost (100bb+) only one of them was a punt (and it was a very big mistake tbh, -$200 to jam lol) but i didn't think in game that i had many weaker hands to bluff with tbh, but apparently i should! the rest were either very well played, played okay or small errors.

don't get me wrong i still think i made too many small mistakes (such as calling 4bets too wide in a couple spots) and the odd spew, but it's usually not as bad as you thought when you review the hands afterwards. your brain is just warped because you lost a lot of $ and thus thinks you played worse than you actually did.

anyways, better get packing!

Update:

i don't think i've been playing particularly well recently. i'm trying out a few new things and they just seem to backfire any time i try them haha. obviously i can't be too results oriented, but it's a little frustrating when you make a certain play and then they just jam in your eye every single time.

i've also completely fallen out of my workout routine. probably for the past five or so years i have been very consistent in terms of either going to the gym, playing fives or running, but recently i'm not really doing any of them just now. it's not as if i am putting on weight, actually i'm probably losing weight tbh cos then i just eat less cos i'm not burning calories from exercise. it probably has some compounding effect- less exercise leads to a worse mood, less of a clear mind and then making poorer decisions in game. i've never really suffered a lack of motivation when it comes to exercise, so i'm not really sure why all of a sudden i just don't really have any interest in doing these activities. i'm still walking a reasonable amount, but i don't think this does much for boosting my mood unless its something like a hike up a mountain.

in terms of my poker, i think i am doing some things well, mostly finding bluffs and continuing to try to find the correct bluffing combos in each spot. there are other things that i am not doing well- namely calling vs opponents who are not bluffing enough, or calling vs fish when, for example, the flush completes and then they snap donk jam in to me and i have a set. unless they are finding some insanely creative bluff, then they just have a flush almost always. so even a set is a fairly easy fold, but then i level myself in to a call and i am inevitably shown the bad news. especially at 500z, people are not very good at finding bluffs in many spots, so you should over fold as an adjustment, but i don't do that and i just project my own bluffing tendencies on to my opponents and then just pay them off. it's pretty tilting cos i know what i'm doing wrong, but i also have this voice in my mind that wants me to play 'good poker' and not become exploitable.

i think the most tilting thing, at least for me, is paying off the nits. cos i know that i can just pure fold all my bluff catchers, but i still call regardless lol (for the reasons that i mentioned before).

so my goals for the rest of the month are to exercise at least a couple of times a week and make more accurate decisions in game, without allowing my own projections to cloud my judgement or warp my decision. if i think that a guy has 90% value and 10% bluffs in a certain spot, i can just pure fold all of my bluff catchers. a good rule of thumb is that until your opponent actually proves to you that they are capable of bluffing, then don't bluff catch against them. they should have, roughly speaking, 33% bluffs for every value bet. if you rarely see them show up with a bluff, then it's almost certain that they are under bluffing.

anyways, gonna go exercise or something today and clear my mind cos i had a really bad session yesterday and made a bunch of very questionable calls. i don't think my spew tends to come from my bluffs, it's almost always from my calls.

this week i've been getting ready to leave Edinburgh, moving some stuff out of my flat on Monday and i am doing the rest tomorrow. i leave for Budapest on Tuesday, which is a little intimidating given the fact i still have quite a lot to do before i leave, but i am sure that it will sort itself out. my best friend and flat mate decided to move back to our old hometown, and to me it felt like a fork in the road where i could go one of two ways- either back in to my comfort zone of my hometown, hanging out with my old friends etc, or move to another country by myself and get out of my comfort zone. i think that many of the decisions we make in life are simply down to our comfort zone. put it this way, would you ever move to your hometown if you didn't know that you were from there? there are tens of thousands of towns, cities, villages etc around the world, so why do we often stay in the place that we grew up in? i'm not saying that i am any different, as i didn't move out of my parents house until i was 23, but at least i am now conscious of the reasons that we make many decisions in our lives.

so i think we can make two decisions in life- spend it within our comfort zone, not really pushing ourselves to our maximum capacity, nor trying new things and experiences, or we can do the opposite. both are fine, of course, but remember that come the end of your life you have to own the existence that YOU have selected. never has it been easier to move around the world, work abroad, work for yourself or learn a new language. so really there is no excuse if you really want to try something new, or move some place new.

i might only be going away for two months initially, but i don't have anywhere to return to when i get 'home' either. i'm not coming back to Edinburgh, nor moving back to my home town. so from now on i will likely just move around places, whether that be in the UK or abroad, and make friends along the way. i do want to buy a flat within the next year or so, but i'll probably just rent that out relatively often and move around, instead of living in the same place for a long period of time.

who knows what is going to happen. but if you said at the start of the year that i would have completed a marathon, about to start training for a second and away to move abroad by myself, i would have not believed you. my old self that was fearful of leaving my parents, or to do things by myself, is now a distant memory.

so while poker has not been going as well as i would have liked this year (i'm still winning but i would like my WR's to be higher) at least i am trying new things. after all, life is about new experiences, isn't it?

June goals:

play more A game, playing more spots in a vacuum.
get back in to exercising again, at least a couple of days per week.
get out of my comfort zone when i move to Budapest, say yes to more things.

simple.

hopefully this post doesn't come across as preachy, but if we want to get better at poker, imo we should apply this to ALL aspects of our lives. we need to investigate the intricacies of our mindset and figure out why we do certain things, but not others. that's why i try to always be honest in here, and not simply post highlights of when i am on a heater etc. some days you have are not particularly great, and others are. without rain, you won't appreciate the sun :)

GG.

zache86 people that i speak to say that ACR is really soft, so i think i am going to start playing on there. will probably try to deposit some money on there this weekend. it's weird how in certain countries you are limited in the stakes that you can play. i have heard similar things about Canada, Germany etc too.

ah that's cool, are there some big tournaments in Uruguay? what sort of buy ins are they? i haven't managed to play any so far this year in the UK, but will see if there are any in Hungary over the Summer. if not, then i will just play in some when i return instead.

cheers mate, glad to be back!

haha yeah tournaments are kind of addictive, you are chasing that high of reaching a final table and potentially winning, but most of the time you come up empty handed. i don't mind playing them for a couple weeks, but i couldn't handle anything more than this tbh haha. i feel like there is so much more justice in cash games :D

for example, in my database of almost 2 million hands at cash games, my EVbb/100 and actual bb/100 are very similar. however, in tournaments the past couple of years i've been crushing mtt's in terms of bb/100, but down a bunch of money. so imo it takes a sick kind of person to be able to accept this :D or perhaps mtt players are mostly just the lucky ones who are on the other end of the variance spectrum haha.

yeah its less than two weeks away now, so really not long to go! thats a good point, Glasgow does have some mountains nearby, but not as many. however, it would probably be a lot more lively during the Winter (when it becomes much more difficult to hike with snow etc). so at the moment i am probably leaning more towards Glasgow, though Inverness would be a better place to stay in the sunnier months imo. however, i'm off to Budapest, so that option is out of the window haha.

cheers! how has the grind been for your recently?

Update:

I've decided to keep this going until the end of the year, as this is what i promised when i titled the thread 'Demondoink's 2022 adventure'. adventures don't end on the fifth month of the year! i can't promise consistent updates, but i am going to aim for every week or two. i do like Instagram in terms of it being more interactive (i feel like you get in to more conversations via that platform) but it isn't really suited to longer form text, which i enjoy doing as sometimes i have a lot to say haha.

for the past couple of weeks i have been playing tournaments, with limited success. i managed to win a small tournament on GG for just over $3k, and cash for a similar amount with a second place finish. however, i have since lost back pretty much all of that profit with a series of days with very few cashes. on Stars i have had even less luck, making a couple of Day two's but ultimately coming up short in making final tables. i've also been playing cash games after my mtt sessions, so my days have been very long. the other day, for example, i played for over ten hours, which is a lot more than my standard 2-3 hour sessions haha. it's good to get in a lot of volume, but my results have been mediocre as i've not been running great. by no means do i think i am an elite mtt player, but i still believe that i'm winning in the tournaments i decide to register. i basically play anything up to $500, and then sometimes hop in the $1k's. for me it doesn't make a ton of sense to play $2k's and $5ks's etc, cos then with a couple weeks of run bad i could easily get in the hole for $50-$100k and wipe out my cash game profits for the year. mtt's are just a fun distraction (sometimes) that i dabble in a couple of times per year, during SCOOP and WCOOP. so even if i play some lower stakes, i don't mind as it's not really about the money.

with that being said, i am almost certainly going to play the $1k main event tomorrow. i believe that i ran relatively deep in it the last time (though i think it was WCOOP), so hopefully in can have a repeat of that! i don't really study mtt's bar watching people like BenCB play on his Twitch streams etc. i would just rather prioritise studying cash games instead of mtt's, as that's where my big goals lie (to keep moving up in stakes and become one of the best 6max players).

recently i've been struggling with motivation to exercise. i think after my marathon i have almost lost interest in exercising haha, having dedicated so much time and effort in to training for that. so i got back to going to the gym again this month, but my interest in that has dwindled again tbh and i have only been once this week. i went on a short 5k run tonight, but that is only my third run since the marathon (over 1.5 months ago). to put that in to perspective, i was running three times per week in the build up to it. at least my poker volume has been good, though!

also, in terms of moving, i have booked my flights to Budapest and i am going there for two months from the middle of June until the middle of August. i used up around eleven days of my stay in the Schengen area when i was in Norway, hence the reason i can't stay for three months, but it will be fun nonetheless! i have a couple poker friends there already, so it should be a fun experience. if anyone that reads this is from Budapest, shoot me a message and i'd be more than happy to meet up for a drink. once i come back i am going to move to a different city in Scotland, as i am completely dead with Edinburgh. Inverness seems like a good option for hiking, but Glasgow would be good as i could (perhaps) get a season ticket to Rangers. so i'm going to have to make that decision. i won't be staying in the next place with my best friend though, who has been my flat mate for the past 2.5 years (as well as my travel companion). he now has a girlfriend, so he is spending a bunch of time with her and is likely to move back to the area that we were born and raised in. i don't have such an issue, so i'm going to new places! haha.

it's 2am here, so going to have a late dinner (as usual) and then get some sleep. big grind tomorrow, so we will see if my luck changes in tournaments!

GG.

Hey guys. i randomly got a notification from Cardschat (a poker forum that i used to post on when i first started playing poker) and i stumbled across this thread, when i was deliberating whether to quit University or not, almost nine years ago. it's funny cos many people ITT were telling me it was a bad idea, but i am glad i backed myself and done my own thing, cos it worked out well in the end! i have made a lot more money than i could have in any other job that i realistically could have gotten, and also get to play a game that i love.

so the important thing is NEVER forget where you came from. i came from the micro stakes like everyone else playing there. poker is a slow process that relies on constant and consistent improvement. back yourself and you can get where you want to!

CC thread

hahaha. that doesn't seem like a good idea tbh :D honestly there aren't really any that even stick out in my mind, most are fairly solid and don't spew a ton. obviously some are weaker than others, but it tends to be that they are on the more passive end of the spectrum instead of the more aggro one. the more aggro/spewy ones seem to have either moved down or stopped playing on Stars. i can think of one or two of them, but i'm not gonna make someone feel shitty about themselves for no reason.

i see other regs sometimes talking about how bad another regular is, and you just come across as being a bit of a prick tbh. if you are so good, then why are you even playing the same stakes as them? don't get me wrong, sometimes i think a reg makes a bad play etc and it might tilt me in the moment, but as i said before, i think that anybody beating 500z+ is a good player. they would probably be beating 99% of the cash games in the world (including live/online).

yeah because of the first two conditions that i put when selecting the players, it meant that i was always going to opt for the more aggro guys haha :D however, i could definitely see why some people would disagree with them and would instead opt for the more solid players in the pool.

in the end it's all subjective. i like to bluff, so i like other players who do the same haha. whether they have a higher win rate than some of the other guys i left out is questionable.

Also, people have to realise that if they didn't make the list, it doesn't mean that i don't think that they are an excellent player. how am i supposed to fit in 100+ regulars in to 5 spaces? haha. any regular who is beating 500z is a very good player imo.

500z power rankings!

first of all, i would like to preface this with the fact that i am ONLY including players in this who have a sample size of >10k hands in my database. so there are many good regulars who do not make this cut. for example Ceelightly you didn't even manage to play 8k hands against me! haha. other guys like Bigblindbets, Prize Winning etc could have also made the list, but didn't qualify.

also, people such as Davy Jones don't really play 500z any longer, so i don't think its fair to include them in the list. i'm not going to include OTB Red Baron or Linus either, who have played sporadically in the pool. i first started playing 500z at the beginning of 2017, so obviously many regulars have come and gone, moved on to other sites, or moved up (or down).

so don't get immediately offended if you haven't been included, you might not have played 10k hands against me (and if you have, then sorry haha).

when choosing a player to include in this list, i am going to focus on a few aspects of their game;

1; do they bluff?

many regulars are pretty big under bluffers, even if they are very good players. so these guys won't be included in the list. i can't understand why you would play a game where bluffing is such a big part, and not deem it important enough to bother doing. bluffing once in a blue moon doesn't make the cut.

so not nits.

2; how tough are they to play against?

there are some guys that are just annoying to play against. you enter a pot against them, and you know it's going to be a battle. it's fun, but it's also annoying. at least with the nits they tend to just fold a bunch and give you free, uncontested pots. you do not get these against the battlers.

3; are they attempting to play GTO? or are they playing exploitable vs other regulars?

as soon as you over bluff, or over call vs a regular, you are playing a dangerous game. you are implying that they are either unwilling, or unable to adjust back. against good, intelligent players, this strategy is unlikely to sustain for more than a short period of time.

imo the best players are playing a mixture of GTO/exploitative poker, but you have to be careful when choosing to do the latter. if i decide to just 100% call vs a certain player, then how long will it take before they realise i'm not folding bottom pair or better against them?

so yeah, i want to select people who bluff, are tough to play against and who are at least attempting to play pseudo GTO, yet also willing to adjust when necessary. with that in mind (and the 10k+ hands and that they are still playing 500z sometimes just in 2022) here is my list!

5; Don'thateme89, Lackoo87gcb, Maxim737, b.a.angelov:

sorry i had to sit on the fence here. it was between these four players and i couldn't pick between them so they are all in a tie for fifth haha.

Donthateme89- maybe i am biased cos i am friends with her, but i think that she is one of the best players in the pool at finding bluffs (and more often than not, the correct ones). she also is tough to play against bvb in a spot where it's easy to be too passive or weak in.

Lacko87- we haven't played together as much recently, but i think he is a good player who understands the game well and doesn't seem to ever spew.

Maxim737- tbh he hasn't really played much recently (i'm not even sure if he has this year) but for the short period of time he played, i found him really annoying to play against. i believe that he came from a HU background, hence the eagerness to battle for every pot. he is definitely someone with the ability to move up, had he stuck around.

b.a.angelov- someone who is willing to find bluffs in almost every spot, and is tough to play against. i recall one hand where he bluff jammed 200bb on the river, and i'm not even sure if i remember any other reg doing that against me before. for that play alone, he makes top 5 for the heart! he can for sure move up imo on to higher stakes, but is focusing on mtt's now, i believe.

4; bigstealer:

originally i had him in a tie for fifth, but then i remembered how he is willing to station, and also find bluffs whilst avoiding spew in the process. so with an overall very solid game, he makes it in as number four!

3; KayhanMok:

if you talk about annoying players to play against, this guy probably tops the list. always battling to win every pot, and willing to find bluffs. he seems to tread the line very well between bluffing enough and spewing, where as some other guys tend to overdo it.

2; Serhiy1989:

finds bluffs, defends checking ranges well and uses PIO approved sizing's. i've ran very well against him and i'm definitely up a decent bit, but that's simply variance cos imo he is one of the best players at 500z+. a very creative and thoughtful player.

1; theIpoker:

this guy has stood the test of time, has slowly improved and is now playing up to (at least) $10k on Stars. he just seems to understand the game better than his opponents. i think in the past one of his biggest weaknesses was not finding enough bluffs, but that seems to have changed recently. whether he bets or checks, you can count on both ranges being sufficiently strong to defend against his opponent. he knows what you are doing before you do :)

anyways, that's my list! if you are offended that you aren't on it, then you better get in the lab and prove me wrong! of course this could all change in a couple months, people who i thought were great one year ago wouldn't even make it in to my top 10 now, and vice versa. this took me ages to write up, so hopefully you guys appreciate it!

hey man, thanks for the kind words! if people are from the thread and add me on Insta, feel free to send me a pm and i will follow you back (cos usually i have no idea who the person is following me on Insta haha). usually i tend to just follow people back who have friends in common.

okay cool, i shall do a list!

nice video and good analysis. i probably need to start implementing a cold call range, especially now that i am playing higher stakes. did you buy your pre flop ranges or solve them yourself? also, are your sims rake specific to, for example, the high rake environment of GG? cos i would imagine that cold calls in that rake structure would be a lot less frequent than at 2k+ on Stars.

hey man. i think we already have each other on discord anyways so if you ever wanna chat just give me a message :) to me it seems like English is your native language, i would never have guessed that you were Argentinian haha.

i am glad that the blog was beneficial to you! tbh i've had second thoughts about ending it, but i dunno i just felt like my posting was getting too sporadic and there wasn't the level of interest in my thread as there was before. where as on Instagram, for example, it's a lot more interactive as i can post stories etc, so i usually end up talking to more people over there. but i can completely understand your eagerness to avoid social media. i did delete it for a while, after all haha.

hey man. i actually have discord now so just pm me or give me a message on Skype if you would prefer to chat over on there. i already had an account but i just never used it, but will do so a little more often now.

haha yeah it's insane that Rangers have managed to get to the final, and it would probably be the biggest achievement in the clubs history if we were to win (and that says a lot given the fact we have won 55 league titles etc). however, to put this in to perspective, we got demoted to the third division 10 years ago after liquidation. so to have gone from the bottom of Scottish football to, potentially, the top of European football (albeit in the second tier competition, though it still has sides like Barcelona, Dortmund etc competing in it) would be amazing.

so hopefully tomorrow it's a good result!

hey Luke Johnson do you think that it would be worth my time to start learning HU? 6max runs a lot less often right now and HU also seems pretty fun tbh. does the HU zoom pool run relatively often?

Instagram page

Hey guys. i have decided to stop posting on here. i think that my blogs have run their course, and that there is not a whole lot else i can do with them. also, i have kinda lost motivation to post, where as in the past i was doing so on a daily basis. nowadays its lucky to be even one per week.

so i would just like to thank everyone who has read these over the past year or so, and hopefully we can meet up irl in the coming years as i start to play a little more live poker, and travel around more again. it's been really enjoyable interacting with different people, helping each other get better (especially with off the table things such as exercise, mindset etc) and encouraging one another.

for whoever wants to stay in contact you can give me a message on Skype and i will be more than happy to have a chat, or give me a follow on my Instagram page that i have recently created. i will be posting more often on that (probably a few times per week) and will share when i travel to different countries etc.

good luck at the tables! Josh.