Live Grind: How to Fall Asleep at the Table (Without Getting Caught)

[Mr Sandbag]

10nl Zone on Bovada doesn't always run, but 5nl and 25nl are always running. It is quite odd.

10nl is gaining momentum slowly though. Part of the reason I stopped playing 5nl Zone was the fact that the jump from 5nl to 25nl was huge and I didn't feel like depositing. But now that 10nl runs at least sometimes, I might have to get back into it.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

And idk about "average" for what time of day? 10nl zone used to never run in the past, it's only recently it's begun to run regularly. 5nl and 25nl tend ot run close ot 24/7 though.

 

[BenjiHustle]

I don't have an opportunity to see how that works. Can you basically start a table or, since it's supposed to move between tables, would that be pointless?

 

[Matt Vaughan]

You can enter the player pool. If you're the first one in, you'd be seated at an empty table. Anyone else who joins will be put there until you reach 6 players, at which point you start the hand. As people fold, they're brought to another empty table (but the same one as each other). If there're still only 6 players though, and the first hand goes HU for example, the other 4 players wait until the other 2 finish. It doesn't start to feel like faster/automated hands until you get maybe 12-15 in the pool.

 

[BenjiHustle]

Thanks.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

How I still have a roll after getting nearly every possible configuration of me flopping TP and villain flopping bottom set is beyond me. Always for stacks too. Thin value jam with TPTK into bottom set that nearly tank folds cause flush came in. Gii against 2 players with top pair top kicker on most draw-heavy board possible without any flopped straight possibility. In against worse TP and... bottom set.

Just bleh. Also managed to flop about 30 sets today, winning either no bet OTF or just one. Gross. Feel I'm playing better every day though. Now if I could just win more than a few bb's in a session, that'd be fun. Or just not lose a ton. Kthx.

In all seriousness feeling much more confident than last night/earlier today. Just need play good to turn into wins at some point. Def still making some mistakes but for the love of god I'm getting it in sooo so good so much of the time against villain's range. When you only run into the top of it it's extremely disorienting though. Run into that many sets with TP, get folds the rest of the time, makes it feel like I can't even value bet TP.

Hopefully can have some good news one of these days.

Also wtf do min 3b's mean...

 

[Matt Vaughan]

And by min 3b's, I don't mean 2x. I mean literally they just click "raise" after I open the pot. Super bizarre. Used to think it was almost always AKo, but I've seen pure air and AJo with it today and I just don't get it.

 

[Logan2]

but for the love of god I'm getting it in sooo so good so much of the time against villain's range. When you only run into the top of it it's extremely disorienting though. Run into that many sets with TP, get folds the rest of the time, makes it feel like I can't even value bet TP.

It sounds so much like zoom, that's why sugested reg tables instead.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

Yes but the thing is people don't really fold that much, which makes this aggravating. It's not the norm - it's an anomaly.

And people still do ridiculous things. Like, I'm only down $20ish on the day I think. Because other times people spazz with a 3rd pair when I have an overpair and just snap-gii in a 3b pot. But I've run into tops of ranges a ton lately.

This is variance, it's not actually true that I can't value bet TP - I was saying it feels like it because of how I'm running.

 

[BenjiHustle]

Can't even say it's because they know something about you in particular so it's really hard to figure out. It's not like they're specifically set mining against you. Wishing you the best of run goods and loosest of action.

 

[Logan2]

When you say people don't really fold that much, you mean vs you?

Because if Zone is fast poker like zoom means people f, f, f, f until they get a hand they like, and is expected not fold much after decide to play a hand.

But zoom played different than reg tables, even folding bottom set is a comon thing there, so value beting TP 3 streets is so rare.

Of course zone is different considering everyone is unknown.


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[BenjiHustle]

They don't know who's who though, because of anonymous tables/players.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

When you say people don't really fold that much, you mean vs you?

Because if Zone is fast poker like zoom means people f, f, f, f until they get a hand they like, and is expected not fold much after decide to play a hand.

But zoom played different than reg tables, even folding bottom set is a comon thing there, so value beting TP 3 streets is so rare.

Of course zone is different considering everyone is unknown.


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No, I'm not saying that they don't fold vs me. I'm saying they don't fold in general lol. It's anonymous poker so they don't know who I am.

I think you're vastly overestimating the similarity between zone and zoom. They are similar mechanically, but they have SUCH different player pools. 100nl regular tables on Bovada plays something like 10nl on Stars, to my knowledge. So take that same concept and apply it to zone poker vs. zoom. AND on top of that, it's anonymous so people just take ridiculous bluff lines and call lines more often.

There are only a handful of board types where I'm not looking to value bet TP 3 times against a 100bb stack.

 

[Logan2]

i see, then if 100 is like 10 on Stars, you are playing 10-25 is like what? 2-5nl on Stars?, I know that bovada was softer but never play cash there so no idea was that soft.

My question is, you mention are geting on everyones top range, but how you put people on a range when they are anonimous?, the range you put someone randomly could be way off no?

How can even adapt your calling, opening, 3b ranges when no clue who you facing.?

I'm gessing is like play hudless, but even hudless after time you start making asumptions when get some idea how they play or what they show,
but on zone this never happen because not face the same players in next hands.

So how to adapt?. I'm guessing need to use a vs unknown strategy, which is like when you just move up to a new level and have zero stats on villains,
you need to play more careful and can't exploit villains that easy.
Hell, when moving up i will expect the best scenario be BE until get enough stats to start adapting individually to players, so how you adapt to a unknown for life playerpool ?

Side question, why decide to play there instead of carbon?
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[Matt Vaughan]

You answered your own question, Logan You have to play the same way you would against unknowns, for the most part.

But I would not say it's like moving up. For one thing, once you play enough hands, you get a sense of what the average player is doing. And that's what playing here is like. You are playing against a distribution of players, but any stats/reads I have are against the average player type. So I basically just have to take solid default lines that either won't be exploited, or will exploit the average player.

Again, it's not really like moving up. Except in some cases where a strong player moves up multiple levels, most people moving up struggle to win at first because they over-adjust or the players are better etc. But we've already said that the games are so soft.

What if you jumped down to some hypothetical level that was softer than 2nl? You don't have stats on anyone, and you can't see their screen names. Are you going to lose? Will you not know what to do? Not really. You'll do fine, because almost everyone is terrible.

To answer your last question: The last time I tried to deposit on carbon I had major bank problems. Plus, they got rid of rakeback a while ago and went to a VIP system that seemed pretty terrible to me. So the fact that Bovada doesn't have much of a reward system became less of a turn off relatively.

But the biggest thing is just how soft Bovada is. I'd say 25nl plays like 4nl on Carbon - at least since the last time I played 4nl at Carbon lol. But basically I moved up 3 levels in 5 months on Bovada the last time I played. There's no way in hell that would happen on Carbon unless I played 3x as many hands and started at 4nl.


Edit: And by the way, I haven't played cash on stars, so I can't draw direct comparisons. I'm mostly going by the reactions of people who play on stars when they sweat me playing bovada. Any comparison is going to be approximate.

 

[Logan2]

I got you now.

Playing 2nl even hudless is easy, then how much hands running bad are we talking?


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[Matt Vaughan]

I've been losing live and online for 4 months. Recent run bad on Bovada is just the tip of the iceberg, and probably only talking about 10k hands from that. It's not this particular instance that bothers me, it's the fact that I've been losing for a third of a year.

 

[Logan2]

I know what you mean, but that is why volume is so important, i mean 4 months should look like losing forever, but if you are reviewing with duggs at least you know playing mostly well, rigth?.

4 months live probably like 15 days online though, imagine if was in stone you going to run bad 50k hands (i know is imposible to know), how much time is this live?, a year?

At least online can try to load more volume to run-out bad swing, but also because the format should be expecting more variance on Zone, no? (at least is that way on zoom)

Anyway, i know you know all this, just trying to remember it happens and mostly can´t do much, maybe playing a less swingy game (*cofreg tables*cof) could help until things get back to normal.

Hopely things get a ton better for you man, poker and life of course, best of luck.
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[lynxpoker]

Great OP. Really interesting and well narrated/explained.

Reading some of the replies here, I'm thinking that getting away from the grind would be better for you in the long run. Maybe limit your poker playing to one quality live tournment here and there (like maybe an official WPT event or something like that) and do something else with the rest of your time.

Since you are a good poker player, grinding against a volume of mediocre players (live or online) is not effective. Good poker players are bad against mediocre players because mediocre players play erratically and unpredictably. And, I actually feel that good players are better off playing good players (or really poor players) because at least you can somewhat predict how those people play.

Me, if I could afford to, I would rather lose one high buy-in tourney against quality players than slowly lose that same amount of money over months and months against mediocre players while wasting tons of hours doing it.

Because if I lose to a good player, I'm totally ok with that because it's probably something that I could have done better. But, if I lose to some erratic mediocre player, it's really aggravating because you have no control over the situation and are just leaving things to luck.

And playing good players is fun and playing mediocre players is um...not.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

I know what you mean, but that is why volume is so important, i mean 4 months should look like losing forever, but if you are reviewing with duggs at least you know playing mostly well, rigth?.

4 months live probably like 15 days online though, imagine if was in stone you going to run bad 50k hands (i know is imposible to know), how much time is this live?, a year?

At least online can try to load more volume to run-out bad swing, but also because the format should be expecting more variance on Zone, no? (at least is that way on zoom)

Anyway, i know you know all this, just trying to remember it happens and mostly can´t do much, maybe playing a less swingy game (*cofreg tables*cof) could help until things get back to normal.

Hopely things get a ton better for you man, poker and life of course, best of luck.
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Well it's not like 4 months live and then a few weeks online. It's been 4 months (live and some private online games as well), THEN just moved to bovada again. But I understand what you're saying. Atm it's both about the length of time and the buyins I'm down. I can't really calculate it out easily, but I'm pretty sure I'm down at least 40 BI's in that time.

Great OP. Really interesting and well narrated/explained.

Reading some of the replies here, I'm thinking that getting away from the grind would be better for you in the long run. Maybe limit your poker playing to one quality live tournment here and there (like maybe an official WPT event or something like that) and do something else with the rest of your time.

Since you are a good poker player, grinding against a volume of mediocre players (live or online) is not effective. Good poker players are bad against mediocre players because mediocre players play erratically and unpredictably. And, I actually feel that good players are better off playing good players (or really poor players) because at least you can somewhat predict how those people play.

Me, if I could afford to, I would rather lose one high buy-in tourney against quality players than slowly lose that same amount of money over months and months against mediocre players while wasting tons of hours doing it.

Because if I lose to a good player, I'm totally ok with that because it's probably something that I could have done better. But, if I lose to some erratic mediocre player, it's really aggravating because you have no control over the situation and are just leaving things to luck.

And playing good players is fun and playing mediocre players is um...not.

Thanks for your input lynx, and welcome to the thread. Have to disagree pretty strongly with your statement about good players not doing well against mediocre players. Variance will be lower than against good players, pretty much by definition (definition of a good player compared with mediocre player should always be that your win-rate is lower against a good player).

Also, it kind of sounds like you're telling me to quit poker except for one live tournament a year or something? Please don't take offense to this, but that's an outrageous idea for someone like me. Poker is my main hobby, and arguably much more than that atm for me. Plus I punted a huge portion of my BR on tournaments this past year anyway, so I'm not sure the logic is 100% sound there.


Regardless thanks for contributing, and I hope you continue following this trainwreck of a thread

(Oh, and thanks again Logan for taking the time to respond thoughtfully - I appreciate it!)

For shits'n'giggles, here's my BB "won" graph since getting back to Bovada.

Won't bother with any more graphs for now cause sample size is obv tiny. But suffice it to say that I've won virtually no showdowns over the last 10k hands. I'm doing okay getting flop folds and such, but I'm just getting absolutely demolished at showdown recently. Down 18 BI's at 25nl in the last 5k hands there. Thank goodness I was winning there to begin with when I was losing at 10nl and 50nl lol.

Overall I've run the worst at 25nl, but I have truly bizarre results at 10 so far. It's not quite the ski slope it was before but it's not pretty lol... And I'm getting killed in HU pots OTF as the PFR, which basically has to be runbad, b/c we should be making lots of money in HU pots OTF when we raise pre, just by cbetting a reasonable % and not doing anything too stupid and whatnot.

 

[IPlay]

Yeah, still Carbon. I get no rakeback on Bovada and so, if I end up being breakeven, I can always rely on volume to make me some cash. Sure sounds like a defeatist attitude on my part, eh? Lol

I know the last 2 things I said about you possibly outplaying yourself and the games getting harder are somewhat hypocritical of each other. Outplaying yourself, though, is what I think to be the most possible reality. It's hard to be a thinking player at these stakes sometimes. Super hard.

Kind of off topic but I thought Carbon no longer had rakeback? If I am wrong please tell me how to get it

 

[Matt Vaughan]

He might have gotten some type of deal from an affiliate that has grandfathered rakeback deals or something? Dunno though.

Made an interesting foray into PT4 today. Was looking at my leaktracker and my luck bell curve. Noticed that I'm doing a decent job of tightening up pre (now running 26/20ish instead of like 28/23 - could def bring it down a bit more though). Also, I'm not hitting as many sets as would be expected, but I'm hitting more straights.

However, every villain position is ALSO running hot with straights. And sets. AND flushes.

Ok, not quite every spot running hot for every one, but in general running quite well in terms of spiking miracles. Only 14k hands or so - I'm not claiming this is the run-bad of the century. But I AM glad to see that my perceptions were somewhat correct. I just felt like people were constantly flopping sets on me in cooler situations where I had to stack off, and also getting there a lot more (I was running into tops of ranges). I was still running okay myself in terms of making hands, but I just felt like everyone else was running even better, if that makes sense.

The bell curve helps confirm that in part, which is nice since it's not like I was running extremely below EV - most of my big losses didn't come from gii before the river, and if they did it was often those cooler spots.

Down another $50 today, which sucks, but felt I played quite well. Hopefully I can turn this thing around at some point. It's disheartening to keep losing, but it's also just getting old. Even losing players string wins together sometimes, so I'm hoping I get some of that soon. Way ahead of pace for making my 15k hand volume goal this month. That means I won't forfeit my deuces prop, but also I might up my own personal goal to 20k to try to stay motivated through the losses.

 

[Logan2]

Everyone hitting sets, s8, flushes and geting coolered and feeling geting on everyone top range is a every day feeling on "fast poker".

Make a experiment and just play a couple sessions on reg tables and tell us if keep running the same, it can't be worst and could make your life easy.
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[duggs]

No rigged talk please

 

[Logan2]

^^No one say anything about rigged^^
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