Welcome

Hello all, welcome to my online poker blog.

I've been playing on and off for a decade after being introduced by a friend.

I played regularly for a few years during the poker boom and had a decent record at the micros, particularly Rush and Zoom No Limit Hold'em games (here's one of my graphs).

Around 2012 I began a new career which involved immersing myself completely in study in my spare time, so I had little to no time for poker. However recently this burden has eased and so I have been gradually dipping back in.

I'm an amateur player who still hopes to some day beat the rake.





Sunday 13 May 2012

Zoom poker results so far

Hello, here is the results post that I've been promising. I haven't quite got to 50k hands yet but I feel like I've played enough at 10NL now and I want to test myself at 25NL as that used to be my limit at Full Tilt. I believe that I have sufficient bankroll for that limit with 50 buy-ins. Even if I'm close to breaking even in those games, that should be enough to cope with normal standard deviation and I can always move back down if it goes badly.

The first graph below is my results from all ring game hands (including Zoom hands and a mix of both 10NL and 25NL) since I moved to Poker Stars last June displayed in terms of big blinds won. Volume is poor unfortunately; I had a tough winter in my old job and didn't play a great deal. The second graph is just Zoom hands played in the last 6 weeks or so.


I have included both images because I feel that it is useful to see the bigger picture when dealing with sample sizes as small as 50k hands.

It looks like I'm beating micro full ring in general for a small win rate, and Zoom poker in particular with a smaller win rate than the normal games. This is logical as I practiced table selection principles when playing normal full ring games.

The following picture shows a break down in my positional win rates playing Zoom and the EV adjusted numbers as well. 


I'm happy with many of those numbers, but I'd really like to be performing better, particularly in the blinds. I'm currently improving my strategy in the small blind when I see a flop and I believe that I will eventually bring this number down to around 15-16 bb/100 losses which I would be very happy with. The big blind losses are where I'm going to have to work hard to improve. I think that 45 bb/100 losses should be my target, but the question is how I'm going to get there.

I didn't want to give away too much about my strategy, but know this: I'm voluntarily putting money in the pot when in the big blind about 13% of the time and I'm raising about 6% of the time that I do so. I think that I can profitably play more hands. When I filter the graph for VPIP from the big blind, it shows a steep upwards trend. This leads me to believe that I'm perhaps playing too tightly and that I can afford to loosen up a little. At the end of the day, all we need to do in the big blind with a given hand is to lose less than we would if we just folded. It's a delicate balancing act. Expect me to do a lot of work on playing the big blind over the next 50k hands or so.

2.9 bb/100 is not a great win rate, but to be beating the games at all is some achievement in itself. I must continue to try and fix my leaks because I'd bet that there are players doing much better in micro Zoom than I am.

Hopefully this post has been insightful and shows where I'm at currently with my game. Much room for improvement is the typical verdict with me, and it's the same when it comes to poker. GL

Edit:
After reading this post on two plus two by the uNL legend mpethybridge, I think that I should be thinking in terms of improving the way that I'm playing the group of hands that I am currently rather than loosening up even more. I'll give it time. Perhaps in the future I'll think about playing more loosely, but right now I'm going to try and play better and perhaps get my losses down under 50 bb/100. I think it would help if I did some work on blocker betting theory. Leading the turn can function as a useful tool in many different ways including as a blocker bet.

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