Confessions of a Microstakes Grinder

How I Won A Big Pot With Top Pair

you pot? interesting. I call.

So there I was, grinding for dimes and quarters ($0.10/$0.25) on the internet. I had opened for my standard 3.5x raise from the CO with Ah9hKd6s and faced a preflop three bet and followed by a full pot continuation. Vs a tight player, I would be worried about aces. But my opponent was not a tight player. So I decided to call, and probably to call down. I mean if you think about it, when you factor in my hand, and the board, a lot of hands that are going to be three bet pre aren't doing very well on this flop. A hand like AQT8 double suited, or QJT9. Or QQ88. Even if he has a king, I've got AK. Of course I lose to aces, but against a wild player, he's not going to show up with aces very often. 

The turn was the 7 of diamonds, and now my opponent checked. I bet pot. Almost all of my chips. The river came the ace of spades and he made a final bet. I only had 8 bb left with 180 bb in the pot so it was a pretty easy call.

donks gonna donk

Who cares right? Just another hand of poker amongst the millions played every day online. It wasn't for a particularly large sum of money. But for me it was special. And hey, $25 is nothing to sneeze at. To half the world, $25 is a large amount of money, since they live on less than $6.85 a day. And to make that amount of money in less than a minute, by playing a game, at home, on my computer is pretty cool too. 

But let's dissect the hand because that is what poker players do. To start off with, we can notice villain's irrational three bet. Of course he should just fold this holding. It is a very weak hand. There is no reason to play such a weak hand, except maybe surprise value. His flop play makes sense, just hoping I will fold, and he can hit a straight draw too. Having taken this line, he might as well jam the turn having picked up a flush draw to go with his straight draw. Giving him a generous 14 outs, I don't need to fold very often for him to break even on the shove. Just quickly assuming 14 * 2.5 = 35% of the time he wins, actually he is basically break even on the shove already even without fold equity. Of course sometimes diamonds will be dead. Turn check call has to be a grossly inferior line to jamming. With check call you are basically just hoping for the check back.

How about my play? The first thing we can notice is that my hand violates the #1 principle in preflop hand selection in PLO, which is that you should have four cards working together. However, it is solver approved.

Anyway, today was a funny day. Let me tell you about it. I woke up at 1am, and was going to hit up the casino, but I decided to just chill at home instead. After a couple hours of Anno 117 I noticed I got a free bonus from BetOnline. Yesterday I had gotten $37 from them in the form of weekly / monthly bonuses or drops or whatever. They are trying to copy stake I think. Anyway today it was "your account has been credited with a free promo code". So I put in the code and get $10 GB. Basically free cash for the cash tables, but you have to play it. BetOnline is pretty decent for stuff like that. They used to send me 10 free spins every month, which usually you would just get a few bucks out of. Whatever no big deal right. But at least one time - and I think maybe twice - I can hit pretty big and cashed out $100. Which is sweet when you are totally broke. Anyway, I play the game bonus. And the crazy thing is, within 8 hands I am up $100. 400 big blinds. It was kind of cool how it all went down.

How I Won 400 Big Blinds in 10 Hands of Poker

So the first hand I post utg and fold pre. -0.25. And yah, I'm a whale.

The second hand I post the big blind, and pick up AKQQ with a suit. There is an UTG raise from a short stack, and MP and BU call. I raise pot. UTG calls, and then gets it in on the J42 flop with ATT7 no draw. I win. 

The very next hand I pick up AA53 ds. Naturally I am in the small blind. CO limps, BU a reg I have a ton of history with raises pot, I repot, BB takes two to the face, CO takes two to the face, and BU calls. We have a pot! There is now 56 bb in the middle. The flop comes J93 rainbow. Not ideal but there is a lot of money in the middle so I pot it. Folds to BU who stacks off. I call. he has KJ97 which is good for 70% equity. At least until I turn him dead with the Ace of clubs.

Okay, so we got a little lucky there, but I mean I had to blast it pre with double suited aces. Maybe I could have check folded the flop. I don't know. Or maybe I'm just supposed to get it in bad there. Not every poker hand has some easily digestible lesson about good play.

So anyway, I fold for an orbit, and then I pick up Ad9dKs2s. A pretty nice hand. I raise, and it goes three bet and four bet. The three bettor is short too. Probably we should just fold, but I called, hoping the short stack would just call behind me and we could see a flop. But no, he went all in, which miraculously was not enough to re-open the betting. And of course both I and the four bettor called him.

So we go to the flop with already 167 big blinds in the middle. And what is the flop?

Kd4d8d

I just flopped the nuts in a massive pot. And then my opponent, the one who still had money left, jams into me for 132 big blind. Obviously I call, and he is drawing dead with a queen high flush! I have 97% equity in a 500 big blind pot. And I hold.

And that is the story of how I turned a $10 game bonus into a $125 cashout. Although I did put $15 of my own money into it. Still, that was a really sick run.

How I Will Conquer the World Of Online Poker

Alright. So here is my plan. Right now it is to grind PLO $25 with a $1500 bankroll. I have $165 on BetOnline, $370 on PokerStars, and $965 in my bank. I am going to probably top both of these guys up to $500.

Right now I can play PLO, PLO5, and PLO6 $25. At some point, maybe $2500, I will start adding in some PLO $50. Conversely, if I drop down to $1,000, then I will start mixing in some PLO $10. And at $500 I will stop PLO $25 entirely. As I approach $500, I will switch more and more of my volume to PLO $10. Conversely, as I approach $3,000, I will switch more and more of my volume to PLO $50.

My goals are : 

To win money.

To put in volume, in order to win money.

To play good, and to improve my play.

To game select well.

To work on and carefully monitor my mental game.

I am also going to do pre and post session writeups of my sessions.

Starting with this one.

I am about to fire on a session. This will be short and sweet, probably. First I will make a coffee. Then I am going to fire on around 4 tables - I might go up to 5 or 6 for game selection purposes and then back down to 4 for anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour. Then I am going to do a write up on the session. Then I am going for a walk.

OK. I am ready to fire. I am firing.

Post Session Recap :

Alright. I played 258 hands and lost $24. Not ideal but obviously not a big deal. 

I feel like I played pretty well.

Identify leaks :

No note taking. I don't think I took a single note.

I felt mentally weak at the tail end of the session. Like I needed a break. I felt.... warm?

I guess we should start at the beginning and describe the session.  I played up to 8 tables, mostly at 7. I was trying to get down to 6. I don't mind playing so many tables, there were a bunch of unknowns that I want to get hands on. I can definitely handle it. I think 6 tables should be baseline from now on. I added in some $10 volume which was good. Tagged a bunch of hands for review.

Importantly, I did a pre session write up and post session write up. This is crucial. Often if I do a long exhausting session I skip this step, which is problematic.

Alright, back to the planning board.

My plan is to grind PLO $25. I am going to do basically what I just did. Pre session write up, identify goals, review my past few sessions, make a session plan (how many tables, what limit, what games etc). Then play a session. In the beginning this will probably be similar to what I did just now. 250 hands. 30 minutes. Pre session and post session write up. Then I will start extending. Play for 40 minutes. 300 hands. 350. etc. Identify leaks. Fix the leaks.

Aside from play, I also need to improve away from the table. Hand analysis. Session analysis. Hand review. After my walk, I am going to find a Youtube video of PLO, and do hand analysis of it. Then I will review some forum hands. First my walk.