Hi everyone my name is Alex and I've been playing poker for a year and a bit. I started playing poker after watching jcarver's stream for a while. He seemed very good, was very entertaining and always appeared to be enjoying himself. I started playing sitngos which were filled with fish me being one of them but quickly moved to cash games in may 2015 ( where the real men play ). I played 2nl reg tables + 2nl zoom for some time. A little snapshot of my play:
PokerStars Hand #135789024189: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02 USD) - 2015/05/25 9:44:18 ET
Table 'Astronomia' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Kotoff555 ($2.72 in chips)
Seat 2: goingpaper ($2.04 in chips)
Seat 3: cyfonias ($1.64 in chips)
Seat 4: Corvus80 ($2.02 in chips)
Seat 6: Spiken81 ($1.79 in chips)
goingpaper: posts small blind $0.01
cyfonias: posts big blind $0.02
Tampa3333: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to goingpaper [4c Kd]
Corvus80: folds
Spiken81: folds
Kotoff555: raises $0.04 to $0.06
goingpaper: raises $0.14 to $0.20
cyfonias: folds
Kotoff555: calls $0.14
*** FLOP *** [2d 5c Ad]
goingpaper: bets $0.20
Kotoff555: raises $0.80 to $1
goingpaper: raises $0.84 to $1.84 and is all-in
Kotoff555: calls $0.84
*** TURN *** [2d 5c Ad] [5h]
*** RIVER *** [2d 5c Ad 5h] [7d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
goingpaper: shows [4c Kd] (a pair of Fives)
Kotoff555: shows [Ah Ks] (two pair, Aces and Fives)
Kotoff555 collected $3.96 from pot
yea...
PokerStars Hand #135494155302: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02 USD) - 2015/05/19 8:43:04 ET
Table 'Mrkos' 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: goingpaper ($2.01 in chips)
Seat 2: jan92bvb ($1.41 in chips)
Seat 3: GoldFate ($3.45 in chips)
Seat 4: sergey dust ($2.13 in chips
Seat 5: awayatacica ($2.49 in chips)
Seat 6: vadriam ($2.73 in chips)
goingpaper: posts small blind $0.01
jan92bvb: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to goingpaper [Kc Ah]
GoldFate: folds
sergey dust: folds
awayatacica: folds
vadriam: calls $0.02
goingpaper: raises $0.08 to $0.10
jan92bvb: calls $0.08
vadriam: folds
*** FLOP *** [5d 6s 7c]
goingpaper: bets $0.21
jan92bvb: calls $0.21
*** TURN *** [5d 6s 7c] [3s]
goingpaper: bets $0.62
jan92bvb: raises $0.48 to $1.10 and is all-in
goingpaper: calls $0.48
*** RIVER *** [5d 6s 7c 3s] [3h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
goingpaper: shows [Kc Ah] (a pair of Threes)
jan92bvb: shows [9c 8h] (a straight, Five to Nine)
jan92bvb collected $2.74 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $2.84 | Rake $0.10
Board [5d 6s 7c 3s 3h]
I was extremely aggressive in spots where I shouldn't have been bluffing in the first scenario against a nit reg who isn't likely to fold a better hand and in the second against the fish who wont fold, on a board that's very bad ( kind of) for my range. What I actually learned from losing in these hands was in theory and practically almost nothing. I didn't understand these spots and couldn't have possibly gotten close to understanding them at the time I was a massive aggro fish. Wow how could someone like me gather any kind of win rate in poker?
Over a year later and I've managed to achieve decent winrates in reg table + zoom. All I had to do was do copious amounts of hunting through misinformation and find the rare gems that were actually decent information. I read the mental game of poker, advanced heads up nl holdem (still digesting this one and its been over half a year), watched countless hours of 'study videos' and twitch poker pros like adrienfenixx + lex veldhuis + tonkapp. All to beat 2nl.
That said all that effort was not wasted in my opinion. In my quest to beat 2nl I think that obtained a very good fundamtental understanding of poker. My next step is to move up to 5nl and try beat that and then the next stake. Upcoming blog posts will detail my 5nl adventures and also talk about some of my crazier strategies that I've tried in my poker adventures.