Fletchdad and Poker Zion: The journey.

OK. I now have started my journey down the path of micro moving. (My term, means moving up through the micros... I hope). I will be accompanied by the gracious staff at Poker Zion. I already had memberships to other training sites, but they are all pick and choose. As I understand PZ's concept, they give a structured and planned concept that is already laid out week for week. Other sites, as most people know, are a cafeteria in which you take what you want and leave the rest. The main problem with this is, IMO, how do you know exactly what you NEED? Now, PZ will not necessarily help there either, but they will help me focus on single topics and work on certain areas, concentrating on a single aspect of play every week .I will certainly find enough areas that I need to improve in.



I had opted for the beginner course, and John suggested I go ahead and take the advanced one. He gave me the option of retroactively moving back if I feel this to be best. Since I do have a good grasp on basic concepts, just don’t seem to have utilized them fully to my advantage, I will take his advice.


I play as much as I can, but am getting better at not playing if conditions are not good for me. Like if I see I am tired, tilting, or otherwise not playing well and not able to combat that, I break. I do try to un-tilt in game. 3 months ago that was near impossible for me, now the advancement I have made in quickly dealing with tilt and putting it behind me is one of the steps I have taken in poker of which I am very proud. I work very consciously on this and have had many tools to help me. Books and working on my reactions to daily situations that have nothing to do with poker have all been of great importance to my improvement.


So I plan to play as much as I can. I will eventually try to make targets on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, but with a job as a musician, which means the phone can ring at any time (Please let it be so lol) and any poker plans I had must be postponed. I also have a family, so those of you with one as well will need no explanation of what that can sometimes do to daily plans....:-).. I will take the PZ concepts and try to implement them in my game, while trying to spot other leaks at the same time.


Points I feel I need to improve on/understand better/learn. (the list will not be complete as I don’t know if that much text is allowed in a single post....)


Dealing with 3 + 4 bets. Analyzing opponent player types in 3 + 4 bet pots so I know which way I need to react.


Hand reading generally.


Better understanding of board texture + player type + position and how to best proceed in any situation.


Barreling multiple streets... when to, when not to.


HUD stats. I need to revamp my HUD and my pop ups. Like I know I need to combine stuff like „called PFR, folded to c bet OTF“ as one example. There are so many tools I can use to better make decisions. This is just a matter of me making notes when I see something I need that is missing, but I often forget.


Player notes. I play starts and when I make notes and another table needs attention, my note is in the background. This is a pain and often tilts me when I type, get a table popping up and have to go back to the note and type, same thing again....uggggg. This makes me just not take notes, which is equally bad. But as I play minimum 4 tables (easy to note for the most part) up to 12 tables (impossible to take a detailed note for me) my note taking suffers.


I am also way to tight IMO. I often have stats like 12/10 or maybe even 9/7 after 50-60 hands. Some tables are looser, and I can have 25/20 or something but that is less than a 18/15 type. I play only 6 max. I also don’t know if I should play FR more since I seem to be so tight and adjust too slow......


I am thinking of playing max 6 tables at a time, maybe even less, to improve my hand reading and HUD stat analysis in game. I feel very comfy with 6, and not stressed at all but maybe 4 is better?.


OK, I will now and then post my stats and graph. I will also describe the PZ concepts and how I can try to implement them.


Tl;dr


I am a PZ member.


I am trying to improve


I play.

I will post graph and stats around every 15K hands or so.. or should I make it 30K?

GL Fletch, looking forward to your thread.

I also find it very irritating when you are typing a note and tables keep popping up!

Graph every 15K or 20K is good imo.

in and gl

Phew, thanks for that

GL man.

Subscribing. Best of luck fletch.

Looking forward to following this and learning from you for free instead of actually paying for it GL Jay!

original post too long fletchy so I didn't read it all

but, good luck in your quest and cya on skype.

GL man, as the rest have said.

Hey Fletchdad,

I'm signing up to follow your adventure. I'm also trying really hard to focus on improving my micro cash game while juggling a job and family. A very good first post (I like to read!). Lots of info and hoping to learn lots vicariously...

A few thoughts to share from my micro playing. Take them or leave them as they fit you.

I started at FR but moved over to 6-max because I enjoyed its pace and adrenalin rush more (and liked basically getting rid of the EP that FR has). I wouldn't worry so much about your specific VPIP/PFR stats as a first thing to worry about. Focus more on which cards you use for your starting hands based on your position and the types of opponents you are playing with. That ties in to the HUD you have and what info you are getting off of the other players at the table. Honing this will take care of your stats.


So for my next piece of unsolicited advice... I'm finding that playing fewer tables when I'm trying to really learn how to improve my game and feel is mandatory. You want to see how different players types are reacting to what you're doing at the table and that's hard to see with that many tables (at least for me it is). I've found that 4 is the maximum number that I can play and really be trying to learn and study. I'm also finding that playing fewer tables often leads to playing better and thus making more $$.

Final piece of advice... I have found it much easier to focus on one specific aspect of my game (like 3betting or player-type tendencies) and hone that until it becomes more automatic. I've been making lists just like you put in here about where I want to improve (a very very long list!) but it gets overwhelming. And when I tried to "makeover" my game, I ended up making too many changes at once and really playing poorly.

Now my post is tl;dr!!!

Bottom line: Good luck with this and thanks for sharing the path.

Congrats Fletch', subscribed and looking forward to your future posts...

GL Fletch. Looking forward to this.

GL & in

OK, decided to post after 15K. It is the normal up and down I usually have.

The first lessons from PZ came, and it is all introductory, covering among other things table selection and finding your optimal playing conditions.

15K is a small sample but its been a week and thought I would at least make a post. I may wait for a few more hands in the future. My stats surprised me as I am c betting so little. I need to look at where I am going wrong, I found myself calling OOP too much for one thing.

Hmmm, SS are small. Also in my graph my winnings are more than in my reports...??

I will see what I can do to make graphs bigger. I take a desktop shot and post it in the size I took it in.....(after cropping)

Attached Images

Graph-week-1.jpg (47.9 KB, 175 views)

week-1-stats.jpg (19.9 KB, 175 views)

Why are you only cbetting 50%??? WTSD seems really high as well.

Subscribed...

I use Irfanviewer (freeware) for cropping and it works well.

Good luck !

19/13 seems a bit passive? a good place to start revamping your game, if you're gonna play on the tighter side at 6max (definitely nothing wrong with this at all) i would think being less passive would be the first thing to sort out. Make sure you're not cold calling for no reason and don't call with things like 66 in the blinds from loose co and btn opens as you will not be able to make money in these spots.

you're going to showdown way too often buddy, 31%. I am amazed you are still making a small profit.

start folding some crappy hands, give people a little more credit and you winrate will increase.

you should repost the picture somehow bigger because I am having a hard time reading those stats.

I think his high WTSD stat probably has more to do with his low cbet stat than it does with stationing. He's not giving them enough chances to fold imo.

You are learning, thats what you need to concentrate on, thats why you have the PZ subscription. Using that will improve your game, with that improvement, your win rate should increase and some stats like cbet% will change as you become more comfortable cbetting a looser range in different positions.

Its a start and hopefully next time you post theres evidence of improvement.

Good luck.

Yea, I was surprised myself. Its strange how we view ourselves -or how I do anyway. I was sure I was c betting more, since this is not the first mention of my low c bet, and I thought I was consciously making an effort to c bet more..... And I was pretty surprised to see that it is almost exactly where it always has been....

I take a scrrenshot of my desktop and then paste it in photoshop and crop, so it is full size. IDK why it is so small...

I am now trying to learn how to do DB analysis so I can work on WTSD, Cbet and the many other leaks. I am thinking of getting leakbuster, it should be a good place to start. Since I am not sure where the leaks are,it could give me a jumpstart. I also need to do smoe more intensive DB filtering and find spats, like I think I call too much and then fold OTF, I am not sure but it fits in what is emerging as the way I see my profile now.

I also need to look more at exactly which flops are good to c bet. I know some are c/f when I miss, and I am not sure if IP which flops combined with player types I want to barrel 2-3 streets when getting check/called. When OOP also. And these are just a couple...... So much to do, so little time.....lol

The mistake of cbetting too often is better than not cbetting enough. Just go cbet crazy for a while only avoiding the most horrid of boards (you have AKo on a 79T 2-suited flop).

In and GL, Fletch. I will definately be following this even though I switched to STTs at the beginning of the year. Who the hell knows, maybe I'll eventually end-up back at cash anyway.

I'll be curious to see how you do and I'm also very interested in seeing what you think of their more structured approach to teaching the game. That seems like something that could appeal to me a lot.

Anyway, GL man and rungood.

What about multi way pots?

Do I cbet into 2+ players? OOP or IP when checked to?

Hi, Im new to this site and forums in general. This is a great tread for me as I have recently started poker (february) and only play micro cash game as well, and I am struggeling. So thanks and GL

When in doubt, bet it out! cbet less frequently against multiple opponents but still fairly often. Cbet MORE often when OOP.

Been a long time since I used PT3 but I thought you could right-click on a graph and grab/save it like with HEM? Also you don't have to grab your whole desktop. If I remember correctly (I use extra screen capture software) use Alt-PrintScreen to capture the active window instead of the whole desktop.

I expect the reason your images shrunk is because you attached them as PNGs. If you host them on your own image host and just use [img] tags this doesn't happen, but for whatever reason the forum software will scale an attached PNG. So if you're going to attach, use JPGs instead.

I use HEM so have to look into that. I save them for web in Photoshop, so they are saved as .gif files.I can save as .jpg, and will try that next time.

Well, duh, I looked right at your screenshots and still thought they were PT3, lol. It's not like I haven't been using HM1/HM2 for the last 4 years. I blame it on my old eyes. And senility.

GIF's are typically bad all the way around. Never use GIFs, they're indexed palettes with limited colors and a patent-enforced compression protocol -- PNG was developed to replace GIFs about 15 years ago and are way better in every way, except that this forum for some reason scales them when attached. Apparently GIFs too, which I honestly hadn't tested since I didn't think anyone still used GIFs for anything other than animations. Definitely use JPG if you're going to attach then!

OK, I will post jpg next time, thanks.

I also want to update on the course - or not, actually, but want to mention it.

I wont go into any detail for a couple of months about what I think about PZ, since I wont really know much till it goes on for a while. The one thing I have noticed is in the forums there, you mainly only get responses from the staff - all poker pros from what I have read - and I like that. I can get opinions from the average player on the forum of my choice (hmmm, which one could that be...lol) but it the old "opinions are like....". I have not posted much yet, but like the idea that you can get some dialogue going with knowledgeable players and not having to wonder if the poster has any real credibility. So many posts in forums come off sounding like "This is the real deal" and it can be bad advice. I am sure as a player progresses, even advice from some pros will eventually be "meh, good for his style, not for mine" but that should be a positive development.

in and subbed..

only learn't now that it went to fletch, if anyone deserved it it was him.

well done bro and gl!

Bring the window you want to copy to the front and hit "alt" + "print screen" and it will only take a pic of the window in front... not the whole screen.

That should fix the incredible shrinking pics...

-

^^^ We covered that already.

The shrinkage is not due to size, but to the forum software, which converts non-JPEG attachments to JPEG and for some reason, scales them in the process. Attaching JPEGs directly avoids the conversion/scaling, as does hosting the image yourself and posting the link instead of attaching (which is what I always do).

OK how does that work?

Same here D'... It's why I've never messed w/ images on tha site yet, but was too scared to ask what I thought might be a silly question...