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Journey to $10,000 playing 1 million hands of 10nl zoom

337 posts · member since Mar 2013

I am on a quest to make $10,000 from 4 tabling 10nl zoom. I'm planning on it taking me about 1 million hands. Maybe more

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04 November 2018 at 05:42 AM

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Earlier posts are available on our legacy forum HERE

337 posts · member since Mar 2013

2d ago

Been busy, but I survived day 2 as well. I'm at 300,600k chips for top 10%-15% of the field for AB and C. We'll see what it is after D finishes in less than an hour. Probably have a bit above a 50%+ chance of making the money at this point given my stack depth and number of players left. Anything can happen though and I really want things to go smoothly.

227 posts · member since Nov 2017

2d ago

What username can I use to follow you in the app? Do you plan to return to the NL10 marathon after the WSOP?

337 posts · member since Mar 2013

2d ago

by Funpokerrr

What username can I use to follow you in the app? Do you plan to return to the NL10 marathon after the WSOP?

Look up Kyle Mart and you should be able to see my chip stack and other information on the WSOP live app. As for the 10NL marathon, I actually may complete that mission some day believe it or not, but there is a chance I won't. I have to be in the right mood to do that kinda thing. The way things are turning out on the geofenced in sites that I play on are just too good to resume that challenge for now. If I am to complete that challenge it would be more so for the sake of completion than anything else.

Anyways, tournament is about to start in less than 30 minutes. Super nervous, but I think I'll calm down after playing a few hands. I do have a pretty big stack, but there is a guy 2 seats over that has me covered which isn't ideal, but I just got to deal with what table I've been given. There are a lot less players with million dollars worth of cashes at this table so hopefully this table will be a bit softer than yesterday.

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88 posts · member since Jul 2010

19h ago

8/900, gogogo!

337 posts · member since Mar 2013

19h ago

I’ll make sure to post a long thread with a bunch of hands when I’m done with the tournament. Lot’s of exciting stuff happening!

1004 posts · member since Jul 2023

11h ago

by fast11375

8/900, gogogo!

3/533, they even gave you profile pic #hotrun

337 posts · member since Mar 2013

10h ago

I've been making posts on this other thread starting on page 34 talking about the Horseshoe.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/ne...

I'll make sure to come back to this main blog once my trip is done so I can collect my thoughts and experiences of everything and put the whole story here in a neat little bow.

Just want y'all to know that this whole experience at the WSOP has been surreal and it is wild to think about all the spots where I could have busted, but didn't. I think it would be really cool to put a compilation of all these close calls that ended up working in my favor. Not only in the spots where I won flips or as a dog, but the spots where I almost punted off my tournament life, but decided not to.

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$30M GTD Battle of Malta Online Series Join the Action on CoinPoker July 12 - Aug 3 $1M CoinMillion • $2.5M Main Event • $250k Added Value Daily Rewards

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TheGodson

7yr ago

I am on a quest to make $10,000 from 4 tabling 10nl zoom. I'm planning on it taking me about 1 million hands. Maybe more, maybe less.

A little backstory:
I started playing poker in 2013. I never deposited. I won a freeroll and played a lot of 10 cent HU SNGs. I then moved to 2NL, 6NL, 10NL, 25NL, 50NL, 100NL, and 200NL respectively following a strict 20 buy-in bankroll rule. What has ended up happening is I would move up to 200NL get beat by the regs and move back down to 100NL and then I would move back up again and continuously repeat this process. One day, I decided to go big or go home and played 10,000 hands at 200NL and got slaughtered yet again. My downswing got so bad I had to move down to 100NL and ended up going even further down to 50NL. There was a period of time where I also did $50 and $60 HU SNGs.

Anyways, long story short. I was discouraged and took a long break from poker. Now I am back. This time I'm just going to play to take some profit off the table. Instead of moving up and then back down and repeating this process, I'm going to make a little dough first so it doesn't feel as much like a waste of time.

If I was to total up all the time I've spent playing poker I would not have made all that much money. I think I only withdrew $2000 some. For the amount of time I've played it isn't that much.

I began this challenge quite recently I started with $1,737.87 (This was after a horrible run as well as bad play at the 100NL bad beat jackpot tables. I was at over $3,000 at the time) I am currently sitting at $2,081.43 after 30,137 hands at 10NL zoom. Not that great, but not that bad either. Perhaps it would be higher if I managed my tilt a little better.

Wish me luck everyone! :p...

TheGodson

23d ago

There could be a lot of factors to determine the reason for this. More passive lines from me, the pool getting tougher, playing a greater volume of games with higher stakes. I would say my game has gotten more aggressive over time and not passive. Although, sometimes more aggressive lines can open the door for more spots to be overfolded. For example, If I choose to not make a thin 2bet on the river, I never have to risk getting 3bet jammed on and having to fold lowering the red line. Earlier me would pretty much never bluff the flop as the in position 3bet caller when it was checked to me. I throw out a lot more 1/3 bets to take it down, but that can also open up the door to losing a larger pot later on if I get check/raised or they go all-in on the river. There are so many different lines and I can't really pinpoint exactly what the cause is.

I'm not too concerned about redline as I am about the green line since green line is more important. The redline is a curious thing to me though. There are a lot of spots where you can go for thin value where not too many hands beat you, but also not a lot of worse hands can call. These spots you can take the passive line and increase your blue line or take the aggressive route and increase your red line, but neither one matters a whole lot to your green line.

Sometimes I fight battles that maybe I shouldn't where I could just fold earlier in the street, so the aggression might actually work against me in some cases. It isn't so easy being able to tell so I'm just trying to focus on playing my best and hoping for the best.

This inspired to me to create some graphs with some filters showing unraised, single raised, 3bet, 4bet, and 5bet pots. Here they are:

Unraised:

Single Raised:

3bet:

4bet:

5bet:

Interesting to note that the 4bet pots I'm actually positive in blue line and red line. I think this is because players will often 3bet too wide and not know what to do with their junk. They either have to defend and lose money or fold and lose money. The downside to this is that when I get 5bet I'm usually behind. I also might be 5bet bluffing A5s and A4s a bit too much so maybe I ought to reign that in a bit. With the anonymous feature, sometimes I find myself 5betting against overly tight 4bet ranges, but it can be hard to know. I'm not sure if the 5bet graph is something I should actively work on fixing or if it is the byproduct of having such a profitable 4bet graph. Same thing with the Unraised Graph. I should maybe further split the graph into BB and SB since the only time I really enter an unraised pot is if I was already in the BB or if I have a juicy hand in the SB. For the other positions it can happen, but they are a lot more rare.

Sometimes I wonder if my bluffs are getting a bit reckless, but they do seem to get through quite a lot. I think a big part of improving is to **** around and find out. Here are a few bluffs:

Hand #1

PokerStars - $1 NL - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 100 BB
SB: 118.56 BB
BB: 160.98 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) SB has A♦ 9♦

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BTN has 8♣ 6♣

BTN raises to 2.5 BB, SB raises to 10 BB, BB calls 9 BB, BTN calls 7.5 BB

Flop: (30 BB, 3 players) 5♦ J♣ 2♣
SB bets 9.41 BB, BB calls 9.41 BB, BTN calls 9.41 BB

Turn: (58.23 BB, 3 players) 7♦
SB bets 99.15 BB and is all-in, fold, BTN calls 80.59 BB and is all-in

River: (219.41 BB, 2 players) J♠

The turn bluff on this one is a bit ambitious, but I do feel like these players in particular just had too wide of ranges so I just jammed the turn. I think when players just don't fold their suited things preflop enough these kind of lines can be good with a nut flush draw on occasion, because you can fold out some weak pairs and get called by weaker combo draws. I also am really never drawing dead which is kind of nice if I happen to be up against a strong hand. I think it is reasonable for me to jam with over pairs as well here since both their ranges are wide enough. These guys seemed pretty loose to me.

Hand #2

PokerStars - $1 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (CO): 170.35 BB
BTN: 79.27 BB
SB: 105.21 BB
BB: 149.26 BB
UTG: 184.95 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 5♥ A♥

UTG raises to 2 BB, Hero raises to 7 BB, fold, fold, fold, UTG calls 5 BB

Flop: (15.5 BB, 2 players) 6♦ T♥ 6♠
UTG checks, Hero bets 4.85 BB, UTG calls 4.85 BB

Turn: (25.2 BB, 2 players) 7♥
UTG checks, Hero bets 22 BB, UTG calls 22 BB

River: (69.2 BB, 2 players) 6♣
UTG checks, Hero bets 136.5 BB and is all-in, fold

This hand was played against a reg type player. I find when I'm playing deep stacked poker it can be kind of card to get the full stack when I jam river here with AA or KK. I feel like regs sometimes assume you're not going to bluff them off a fullhouse. Since I block Ah6h, 6h5h, and maybe some slow played AA this seems like a decent candidate. I think if I had 88, 99, JJ, or QQ in opponent's spot it could be tempting to throw it away, because most of the pool probably is under bluffing here. With a value hand, I might exploitatively sized down to get more calls. I probably would have done so in this spot versus this specific player.

Hand #3

PokerStars - $2 NL - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 130.09 BB
UTG: 126.03 BB
MP: 120.29 BB
CO: 100 BB
Hero (BTN): 221.93 BB
SB: 105.48 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A♥ 7♥

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.5 BB, SB calls 2 BB, BB calls 1.5 BB

Flop: (7.5 BB, 3 players) A♦ 9♣ 7♦
SB checks, BB bets 2.41 BB, Hero calls 2.41 BB, SB calls 2.41 BB

Turn: (14.73 BB, 3 players) 9♥
SB checks, BB bets 10.61 BB, Hero calls 10.61 BB, fold

River: (35.94 BB, 2 players) T♦
BB bets 11.68 BB, Hero raises to 206.42 BB and is all-in, fold

This one might have been a little reckless, I do have the counterfeited two pair though so that actually blocks a lot of boats so it seems like a really good candidate. The smaller size on river kind of gave me more confidence in the line, but I already had some ideas of something like this on the turn going into the river. I do feel a bit reluctant taking these lines against frequent donk bettors, because sometimes they hero with the most random stuff that beats me and tilts me to no end. I do think it is possible to fold out 9x though as well as complete garbage.

Hand #4

PokerStars - $1 NL - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 121.99 BB
BTN: 110.38 BB
SB: 206.95 BB
BB: 73.24 BB
UTG: 100 BB
MP: 100 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) SB has Q♥ Q♠

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) UTG has 7♠ K♠

UTG raises to 2 BB, MP calls 2 BB, CO calls 2 BB, fold, SB raises to 12 BB, BB calls 11 BB, UTG calls 10 BB, MP calls 10 BB, CO calls 10 BB

Flop: (60 BB, 5 players) T♥ 3♠ A♠
SB bets 5.7 BB, fold, UTG calls 5.7 BB, fold, fold

Turn: (71.4 BB, 2 players) A♣
SB checks, UTG checks

River: (71.4 BB, 2 players) A♦
SB bets 6.8 BB, UTG raises to 82.3 BB and is all-in, SB calls 75.5 BB

This hand was a fun one, because immediately going to the flop I'm kind of playing a guessing game, because it is 5 ways with a mediocre hand versus some looser players and I don't really know what to do. I opted for a 1/10 bet which I don't do all that often, but it felt okay at the time with so many players with this board texture. River is tough, because I was hoping to get value from a smaller house, but when he jams I have to think about how often he's betting the turn with an ace. Also, with the flop going 5 ways people are bit more reluctant to bluff. However with fish, sometimes they overlook the number of players seeing a flop and do it anyway. I know fishier players love to trap with 3 of a kind more often so that also works against me. Also, me having the ace isn't that crazy of a possibility either from his perspective. Fortunately I was able to find the call this time and be right.

Hand #5

PokerStars - $0.50 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 128.48 BB
BB: 112.16 BB
UTG: 102.7 BB
CO: 91 BB
BTN: 100 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) SB has K♣ A♥

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BB has Q♣ Q♦

UTG calls 1 BB, fold, fold, SB raises to 7 BB, BB calls 6 BB, fold

Flop: (15 BB, 2 players) 9♥ Q♥ 3♥
SB bets 3.84 BB, BB calls 3.84 BB

Turn: (22.68 BB, 2 players) 7♠
SB checks, BB bets 16.12 BB, SB calls 16.12 BB

River: (54.92 BB, 2 players) Q♠
SB checks, BB bets 85.2 BB and is all-in, SB calls 85.2 BB

I opted not to 3bet on this one since I felt the opponent's range was abnormally tight. River I decided to jam, because I find the players with the tight ranges pre will sometimes get married to their hands post flop so I thought jamming might get called w/ a pocket pair containing a heart, a flush or sometimes a premium with no heart that just can't let go. I was very pleased to see the hero call with the ace high. I share this one, because I think it is cool how sometimes with quads you want to go small and induce the bluff, but other times you go for it all and it is always situationally dependent....

TheGodson

1mo ago

I've been playing some more lately and have been running/playing well lately. I've hopped back into 200NL tables and feeling good about my game. I've been thinking of a concept about understanding your personal game tree. You can build a simple game tree with single bet sizes on all streets and have that not change too much in accordance to the board and your hand class. You can also build a complex game tree with many bet sizes where your opponents might have a harder time figuring out what you have. The benefits of the first strategy is your strategy is a lot easier to implement, but it can be quite predictable for your opponents. It isn't necessarily easier to play against, but you might not be taking full advantage of certain exploits. The complex game tree strategy can be hard to know what you're doing and it can exploit your opponents greatly and be extremely profitable, but if they figure you out you can kind of be in a situation where you feel like you're constantly f*cking yourself and don't know how to get out of it, because you are giving off bet sizing tells everywhere.

This got me to thinking about a hybrid strategy. Observe these drawings in MS paint of game trees:

Simple Game Tree

Complex Game Tree

Hybrid Game Tree

The green branches represent lines that you know well. They are for the most part balanced or pseudo GTO. The red branches represent lines that you've kind of discovered out of curiosity and don't really understand the theory behind it or have it balanced. Ideally it would be nice to have a big green tree with many many branches, but we only have a finite amount of time so I've been focusing on making my game tree like the Hybrid Game Tree. To my opponents they are unable to see the colors so the trees appear like this to them:

Simple Tree

Complex Tree & Hybrid Tree

By building my strategy to be like the Hybrid Game Tree, my strategy can look to be more complex than it really is while not really being that complex. My Hybrid Game Tree looks similar to the Complex Game Tree from my opponent's perspective. If my opponent is better than me or begins to see the color of my branches then I can revert my strategy to the Simple Game Tree which will likely not be the greatest in terms of EV, but I also won't be getting ripped apart either. I feel like I've always had a bit of a Hybrid Game Tree to some extent and I'm sure most people playing poker have this to some degree, but to make it a conscious decision is another matter.

At the end of the day I can split sizes on all streets and my opponent will be none the wiser. If they are hyper focused on me they may develop pattern recognition and destroy my red branches, but I also don't have to split sizes if I don't want to. The general approach to poker that is taught is to have a single size preflop, single size on flop, single size on turn, and then a small and big size on the river. I think this approach is great for building up a Simple Tree, but if you deviate from this I think there is a lot of EV to capture. Splitting to other sizes will also affect the EV of the other sizes as well since a hand of certain strength in one size will affect the strength of the other.

I believe this is why sometimes fish can actually throw an experienced player off a bit, because certain non-passive fish tend to go full out Complex Tree and this can actually work in their favor because they have all these weird ass bet sizes where they donk turn for 1.5x pot or donk river for 1/8 pot. The thing is though, that if you pay really close attention and you figure out what makes them tick then you can adjust and absolutely annihilate them. Even experienced players will use the Complex Tree and it can be tough to play against although I find this player type to be less common.

When players use a Complex Tree bet sizing tells become extremely important. With the Simple Tree bet sizing tells don't matter so much, because that might be the only size they are using.

Range betting and checking is also something a Simple Tree player will use. I love range betting and checking because it makes my tree so much easier to play, but I've been experimenting with adding some complexity into my game to build a Hybrid Tree and I'm loving it a lot.

Here are a couple hands to demonstrate:

Hand #1
PokerStars - $1 NL - Holdem - 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 158.19 BB
BTN: 363.87 BB
SB: 100.5 BB
BB: 386.5 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) CO has 6♥ K♥

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BTN has K♦ A♣

CO calls 1 BB, BTN raises to 4 BB, fold, fold, CO calls 3 BB

Flop: (9.5 BB, 2 players) 5♥ Q♠ 7♥
CO checks, BTN bets 2.97 BB, CO raises to 5.94 BB, BTN raises to 16.38 BB, CO calls 10.44 BB

Turn: (42.26 BB, 2 players) 2♦
CO checks, BTN bets 30.57 BB, CO calls 30.57 BB

River: (103.4 BB, 2 players) J♠
CO checks, BTN checks

In this hand I isolated a limper to the 4bb size which follows my simple tree since it is pretty much the only size I use here.

On flop I range bet 1/3. (I used to do 1/2 here, but I have since changed my strategy to 1/3. 1/2 is more a unique strategy and thought people might play worse against it, but I'm feeling like 1/3 actually plays better, because I'm really not getting check/raised enough by recreational players and I feel more comfortable dealing with check/raises in general) In this particular instance my opponent had been check/raising way too much which actually is probably good against me in a vacuum. However, I decided to make an exploitative 3bet with AKo combos not containing a heart. I am now entering a red branch in my game tree. The idea behind this line is I expect this player to perceive the 3bet as a very strong made hand. I suspect he will either 4bet jam with made hands, fold some middling/strongish hands and call with mostly draws.

On the turn I fire again, because I really want to get value from the draws and bluff out some hands that might have gotten sticky like QJ or QT. AK also blocks AQ and KQ which is nice.

River I check back and hope the jack doesn't help him.

This line is a great line versus a specific type of player and it is something that I've been using for years that would even get scoffed at sometimes by other players, but I really love the line a lot. If I'm wrong about my read though it can backfire badly. This sort of thing happens quite a bit in poker where you can take a line that looks really strong to shift the opponent's range in a way so that it benefits a specific hand class in your range. For example, overbetting a small flush draw on a paired turn to get folds from larger flush draws but still get called by trips. After all, trips can turn into boats, but higher flush draws can be drawing dead.

Interesting to note, when I'm playing against a player that I deem as a calling station I can accidently do this sort of thing to myself and then I start getting exploited. If I just stop bluffing them then my checking range becomes overly weak and then they start attacking that so I also have to include strong hands in the checking range even though that seems counterintuitive since they don't like to fold enough.

Hand #2
PokerStars - $1 NL - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 121.86 BB
Hero (SB): 305.63 BB

Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K♦ 3♠

Hero raises to 2.25 BB, BB calls 1.25 BB

Flop: (4.5 BB, 2 players) J♣ Q♣ T♦
BB checks, Hero bets 1.07 BB, BB calls 1.07 BB

Turn: (6.64 BB, 2 players) A♠
BB checks, Hero bets 2.08 BB, BB raises to 14.92 BB, Hero calls 12.84 BB

River: (36.48 BB, 2 players) J♥
BB checks, Hero bets 287.39 BB and is all-in, fold

In this hand I bet 1/4 on flop. Not sure what is the GTO size, but 1/4 is what I do for my Simple Tree. On turns where there are 4 cards to a str8 I like to do 1/3 sometimes as I find I get a lot of overfolds. I also get the benefit of sometimes getting a large check/raise for over 100% pot. I expect in theory that there should be some two pair combos in range, but in practice I find that a lot of players don't really have those hands in range. Versus these players I like to flat my entire continuing range and include no 3bets. At this point, I expect him to have Kx for the straight very often. I think some players will have the flush draw once in a blue moon, but I also expect it to be under represented.

Once the river pairs the jack, I'm feeling pretty pleased. If I remember correctly, I think he also checked river rather quickly which I think makes full houses less likely than they already are. In this spot I can go all-in to bluff him off a chop and bet somewhere from 3/4 to pot for value with houses which I think will get crying calls from some straights. I could try and play a more balanced approach where I jam a certain number of value combos to be safe, but I don't really feel like it is necessary when I have a high degree of confidence in my exploit.

I don't feel like my heads up game is all that great from a theoretical perspective, but I do believe that some of my exploitative lines do make up for it. The greater the degree of the exploit and being correct the less sound my theoretical game actually needs to be. I watched a YouTube video from the CoinPoker channel and I listened to a high stakes guy named seallama talk about how he had 3 sizings on a certain board texture, I think it was on a river. In my head I was thinking it is unlikely that a human person would be balanced in all those lines. I imagine that he is using 3 sizes that might be hard exploits.

Here is my HU graph for BetRivers for all stakes since I've started playing there

Here is my graph for the previous 30 days at all stakes

Another thing that I've decided to do is go to the WSOP for the Main Event. I've wanted to go for several years, but this time I really think this will be the year. I've already booked a stay at the HorseShoe in Vegas and I'll have to look into getting plane flights setup pretty soon. I'm honestly a bit nervous about it, because I've never really traveled long distances like this alone....

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Journey to $10,000 playing 1 million hands of 10nl zoom

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