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paralellogram's picture
Micro stakes Hyper grind

Hi, Husng.com!

I'm a 19 year old student from Hungary, and in this thread I will be posting my progress.

Some background on my poker history:

During highschool I played some games for play money, mostly reg speed husng's.

Last November I deposited 50$ on pokerstars , played mostly 1.5$ hypers, didn't have any experience with the format, probably played terribly I can't even remember actually how I played, but I remember tilting alot. Finally I busted my roll, and stopped playing till about the 15th of May.

I got an email from Full Tilt, I guess because I was on the Pokerstars newsletter, about free 10$ bankroll which turned out to be mostly tickets.

So I started out with the screen name of paralellogram(lol)

From the tickets I made about 40$, meanwhile starting to play hypers at the 0.50$ and 1$ buyin level, was mostly breaking even.

That's when I found out about Husng.com, and I started watching some of the free videos. From one of the tickets a 2.20$ mtt one I came second in a 404 player pool which gave me a big enough bankroll to start playing the 2.25$-s, but I knew I needed to get my game to the next level, so I bought pokertracker and got a standard membership.

I started watching the videos, mostly the hyper ones, and started playing  the 2.25$ sometimes 2 tabling, using the Coffeehud lite.

I started taking stabs at the 5$ level which I know is stupid, but I thought that the players aren't any better, and the rake is so much lower.

Today I was doing pretty good, I was up 17$ when I started playing some 5$-s

I lost 5/6 games against a fish whos stats were something like 67% call, 33% 3bet from  BB, 20% Vpip from Sb.

I got really angry, sat in a 35$ game, lost, rematched, won, and here I am now.

I am mostly making this thread not to make such stupid decisions again, and of course to get some feedback.

 I am currently at 83$-s will strictly use 50/35 BRM strategy from now.

here are my stats:(only since I started using pokertracker, didn't save previous hands unfortunatelly):

 

I don't really know how the  adjusted is calculated, once I got allin against a 3x first hand with TT, he had 22 and after the line showed a decrease.

 

 

So my goals are to:

-get up to 5$ level, using the 50/35 BRM , so 250$,

-make atleast 500$/month starting from June.

I will take this a LOT more seriously from now, playing 1-2 hour sessions warming up with hand history reviews.

I will post my results here, probably every week or so.

cdon3822's picture
Good luck

Your experience sounds a bit like mine, except more extreme. 
I am a beginner poker player - been playing / studying for about 6 months now. 
I was beating the lowest microstakes and decided to take a shot at some of the higher micro & low stake games because the rake was lower and the players seemed just as bad.
I took some bad beats and made some pretty awful bluffs into fish who can't fold.
Obviously if you think about it these are both good things - I was getting my money in good and my opponents were incredibly exploitable. 
But, I went on tilt, stopped thinking about my decisions and bled out half my roll with the worst possible result: I didn't learn anything from it.
Personally, I find the process oriented thinking required to play poker well quite difficult to execute as I am a results oriented person.
I have come to the realisation that it is unlikely I'll ever make as much money from poker as I will selling my skills to the job marketplace and am content playing to learn the game, only moving up when I am suitably rolled. Hypers have crazy variance and I find it tilting to lose over 30% of my roll in a short period. As such I prefer to err on the side of playing over rather than under rolled. 
Although I do not want to play poker for a living, I am determined to learn to beat this game and I have had some "a ha" moments through my short poker experience which have helped me improve my game:

  • Found every decision you make in EV calculations - if you can't explain why the line you took maximises your EV against your opponents hand range & known tendencies then you're probably not thinking enough about your decisions. Working through the calculations is something the poker literature is pretty light on. Coffeeyay's math videos are a good starting point. 
  • Play to learn the game rather than to win - if you have an edge over your opponents larger than the size of the rake, you will win money in the long run. Every lost pot is an opportunity to find new edges identify spots where you can win more or lose less. Failing to take these opportunities is insanity (doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result). 
  • Analyse your decisions and your opponents decisions - review your plays - could you have taken a different line to win more or lose less? Try to understand the lines your opponents take against you. This will improve your understanding of population tendencies for formulating your readless play and identify lines which you didn't think about before which may be more +EV. 
  • Don't be in a rush to climb the stakes - personally I find it easier to make good decisions if the result won't emotionally affect me. For me this means preferring to play overrolled rather than underrolled. 
  • Be happy when your opponent sucks out on you - if you're opponent sucked out on you, then by the definition of a suckout you got your money in while you were ahead. As the number of these situations approach infinite, you take all his money :)

Good luck with your goals.

RyPac13's picture
Good luck Paralell. Really

Good luck Paralell. Really try to keep the urge of moving up to chase losses away. Don't even consider it an option. Just acknowledge that you're going to have a tough time on some days, even some weeks or perhaps even a bad month or two. You're new to the game, every good player goes through tough periods, it's impossible not to have rough stretches due to variance/not learning enough/playing bad/etc.
So acknowledge that it will happen, that you'll feel like crap during those streches, but realize that it won't be as bad as you think during that time. Just focus 100% on making good decisions, work hard, don't let yourself get tilted (and if you do, take a break from the session) and just make it NOT AN OPTION to move outside your bankroll.

paralellogram's picture
Finally back to playing

Thanks for the feedback guys!
Since I made my first post, I only played less than a 100 games, since the final exams were coming up, and I had to study alot, the spare time I had, I rather spent on resting, as I feel I wouldn't have been able to play my A game.
Finally,  I finished the semester, and now I can concentrate fully on poker.
I bought a sharkscope membership today,I'm planning to search every player I got matched with, will reset my stats to see how I do from now.
I'm planning to play 2-3 hours a day,  using a lot of suggestions from the Importance of focus video from Cog Dissonance.
I would also like to ask, whether it's possible for me to sign up for the Vip program with my current account on Full Tilt, or do I have to make a new one on another site to be eligible?
Will post some graphs soon, and hope for the best!

RyPac13's picture
It has to be a new one on a

It has to be a new one on a new site in most cases. It definitely is that case for FTP and PS and Party, they don't allow retags. Some other sites sometimes do, but most sites it has to be your first, brand new account.

paralellogram's picture
I created an account on

I created an account on pokerstars, and registered it, using the Vip Deal found here.
Had a good first day, didn't put in a lot of volume, played in the Guiness world record tournament, wasn't much room for play, came 8230th, which isn't too bad for such a huge player base
here are the graphs( I guess I'll just play on stars from now):

 

paralellogram's picture
I didn't plan to make

I didn't plan to make an update, BUT:

The game was pretty fast, only 2 hands, first one I minraised, and got a fold, second one I reshoved A8o and he called with TJs
I'm really glad that this happened, as I wasn't having a great day, lots of people donking all over the place, calling stations, maniacs, and it just seemed that I couldn't hit a single flop.
Overall graph for today:

RyPac13's picture
Congrats on that golden

Congrats on that golden ticket.

paralellogram's picture
So far my graph is a mess on

So far my graph is a mess on Pokerstars, I'm posting sharkscope, because I played a lot on my laptop when travelling and can't be arsed to merge the databases,
I'm just slightly under ev. Thanks to that golden sitngo I have the bankroll to play at te 3.5$ level. I haven't done any studying during this time,I can't really analyze my statistics besides replaying hands.  If there are any good tutorials out there, I would appreciate it if someone posted it. I'm also considering buying a Hyper turbo video pack, I've already watched most of the hpyer videos from the standard videos besides the really old ones. I've noticed that I'm questioning my game sometimes and also autopiloting alot. I need to learn to think of the big picture.In the following days I'm taking a break from poker play wise,  will re-read the mersenneary ebook and buy sharkystrator since 2 tabling isn't worth it for me with all theese windows popping up I can't focus on the game.I'm leaving for England on the 6th of July.
I'm hoping that after the fresh start I will be able to finally move up higher, as I've noticed that there is no practically no difference in play at the 7 and the 3.5 $ level

paralellogram's picture
This will be my final post

This will be my final post here, 
I realised most people are doing theese kind of goals/challenges in the poker goal/challenge subforum on 2p2.
I will probably make a thread there at a later date.
It's amazing how much my game improved since I started this thread, so it was nice to read it back.
Feel free to close this thread.

RyPac13's picture
Glad to hear you're doing

Glad to hear you're doing well, but give us a graph update at least!

paralellogram's picture
Yeah I forgot a final graph,

Yeah I forgot a final graph, I was just playing like 30 games a day on my laptop (I'm on holiday) without pt4 or sharky so got only sharkscope

Once I get home I will start grinding out 150-200 games a day, my short term plans are to get up to the 15$ level, and there work up to 3 tables, currently I can't play my A game if I don't single table.

JamesSmith2013's picture
Well average is quite

Well average is quite stunning..I guess it is only concern with sales matter..
ways to improve memory