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.
Just finished a good session and so this week it looks like I'm making good progress. If only if I hadn't spaz mis-clicked yesterday I could be over $100 in profit... :( I have a $30 rake back payment due as well so all looks like it's moving along nicely so far in my quest to beat this limit.
I have just altered my hot keys slightly so that I can keyboard shortcut some more useful bet sizes. I now have 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, 2/3 pot (default), pot and 1.5 x pot. Hopefully with some more experience I can learn to use the different sizes well and maximise EV.
I also played a couple of pots with cardrunners pro Verneer (TheXC on Full Tilt) as he was at the tables grinding for his $200 to $10k challenge. Nothing much interesting, my heart started racing in a blind vs blind situation when I c-bet 78s on a 367r out of position - there was quite a long pause and I was anticipating having to face a raise from a good player with top pair but he folded. Phew.
Happy with my game currently apart from a couple of dumb mistakes I think I'm playing as well as I have ever done. Back to the grind!
For the last 15k hands or so I have had the right mouse button assigned to the call button. It has allowed me to play quickly and efficiently. However a short time ago I raised AKo from middle position and got open jammed on. Having played quite a bit of Rush now and after hearing other players' thoughts on the forums this is AA almost all of the time. But as I moved my cursor to the table and began to press the space bar (which is my fold hotkey) I accidentally pressed the right mouse button. 7% equity in a $30 pot. This is the first big mis-click I have made in poker and it will probably have a massive effect on this weeks results. As a consequence of this huge mistake I have now unassigned the right mouse button and will have to manually click the call button in future. Really disappointed as I feel that I played well aside from this. It will likely take me a week to recover the losses. The only positive to take from this is that it happened to me on a table when I was $30 deep. On a different table I had $55 and villain would have covered that. So I spewed off a buy-in, and I've learned an important lesson the hard way. GL
Fortunately for me I realised this about 500 hands in and stopped. Right after I called a bet thinking villain was all-in (I have the nuts) and then realised he had money left behind (albeit only a couple of dollars). Made one other big mistake when villain turned his hand face up pretty much on the turn and then when the top pair card (which I thought he had) paired again on the river I called a pot sized shove when I should have folded. Playing when tired is something I'm going to have to try and avoid from now on.
There was a TableNinja update today and it's fucked up my method for multi-tabling which semi-tilted me too... I wonder if that dodgy call had anything to do with it. Anyway the issue is that now I can no longer use space bar as my quick fold shortcut - it does not work. Only clicking the quick fold button now does it, and I think this has slowed down my hands/hr. Annoying when you have a good system you are comfortable with and a little update takes it away. Hopefully this will be addressed. If not, I'll just have to get used to using the quick fold button again.
Another thing, I called two 3-bet shoves when I had AA earlier and both didn't hold up. So that's the second week when I'm a fair bit under all-in EV. I'm due a heater methinks... GL!
EDIT: After checking the TN forums today I've realised that the hotkey implementation has had a small change which requires adjusting a setting in the software but I now have my quick fold space bar back :) Happy now.
This weeks poker off to a good $64 start, I'm running well and villains still suck thankfully. I think that $20 an hour is sustainable at 25NL FR Rush which is pretty gross easy money. More than I earn in my real job!! Only time will tell if I come anywhere close to that estimate though.
A leak in my game that needs fixing is that in early position once I'm 3 bet I am only continuing with KK+ which makes it ludicrously profitable for villains to 3b bluff me. I haven't noticed a great deal of them doing it, just one or two. I must choose a couple of hands to use as a 4b bluff. AK maybe?
Other than this, villains are still monkeying around when I decide to continue on the flop. I definitely agree with Verneer that a selective flop strategy is best for this limit. I think people auto assume that you're c-betting your entire range these days and call wider than they should. This characteristic massively favours a value heavy flop betting range. I am currently c-betting just under 60% which seems pretty good to me - and on the turn betting around 40% which seems a little low. I really need to find more situations to fire a second barrel.
Anyway, hopefully the heater continues for a while yet. I'll begin to take some shots at $0.25/$0.50 Full Ring Rush once I reach fifty buy-ins for that limit. That will be in the not too distant future hopefully. GL
I rarely use the expected won line as I think it can often be misleading. However in this weeks case, there have been a few examples (including those from the last post) where I've got the money in good but not won the hand. So I'm using the line to show that I think I've had a really good week and I'm happy with the way I'm playing. I have been running at about 13.5/11 which is nitty but reasonable.
I began the week having not put in serious volume at Rush poker since November and I was obviously rusty. I suffered from fancy play syndrome and ran a couple of big bluffs against unknown players and made a couple of dubious hero calls. But I also did not run very well. Since making the adjustment of playing tighter, less fancy and less suspicious things have improved a lot. I have also (despite the suck-outs) ran pretty well to go with that. Hopefully this will continue into next week.
A break even week, but one that I'm pretty pleased with. GL
Around November time I purchased the AHK tool TableNinja for helping me to play Rush. At the time I wasn't putting in a lot of volume so I've only just realised it's full potential. I have improved my hands/hr from around 1000 to 1200. This may not seem like much but if I can start to beat this limit then an increase in (hourly) win rate of a fifth will prove to be significant in the long run. Highly recommended!
Played around 6500 hands so far this week so on course to hit my 10k target. It's been a week of two halves really, first half I was very rusty and also suffered from some bad variance; the last two sessions I've played less fancy (read better) and also benefited from some good variance. Overall then about half a buy-in down so still looks like I'm not quite there with my strategy yet. But I don't think I'm far off. Mainly because of hands like the following:
I hated life on the river here, I was convinced he'd rivered Queens full (with a club draw to explain calling down) but against unknown players once I've put in that much of my stack I'm never folding; if I've been trapped or sucked out on then whatever, cooler. If villain and I had been a lot deeper and he'd shoved here I might have considered a fold, so there are situations where I think his play is fine. But when I'm pot committed here it's foolish to say the least. Right, going to fire up some more tables for a bit and play a few more hands now. Will post a complete weekly update over the weekend and will also strive to do this from now on so that it rounds off everything nicely and gives me something to blog about. GL
Ouch, tilting now and time to quit :(
Full Tilt - $0.25 NL RUSH - Holdem - 9 players Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com
Just watched an excellent video over at Cardrunners by a player called Verneer who is undertaking a $200 - $10000 challenge this year and is beginning by playing micro-stakes Rush. Further to the comments I made in the last post about my play being far too fancy for these limits, I was given good solid evidence that a nitty pre AND post flop style can be very succesful down here. This is a player who won at stakes much higher than this and he is advocating a very tight hit or miss style of post flop poker with evidence (50K hands) that it works. So, I will take a leaf out of his book; learn some patience and turn down the aggression a tad. Bet when likely to be favourite and let villains call too lightly and bluff too widely. Will post some results over the weekend. GL!
