On a mission to becoming a MTT Crusher!

[J-kob]

Hey there everyone!

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Jaka (you can call me Jacob), I'm 29, from Slovenia and I have been playing poker for around 8 years now. I am working with Milan since March 2016 and have decided it would be a good thing to finally start writting a blog! I will write in english, I hope that is ok with you guys. I do understand most of what you are saying but I am not really a fluent serbian speaker so it will just be better to keep it in english.

Anyway, I have played fast/zoom games 80% of my poker career I guess; ever since Rush on FTP got out. I did a short journey into HU Hyper SNGs somewhere inbetween (up to 30$ BI), tried some MTTs, but always returned to cash.

Right now I am »stuck« at NL50-NL100. I have been playing NL100zoom for the past 3 years (until July 2016, when Stars left Slovenia) and then NL100 FF on Party Poker. Lately I tried to jump into regular tables and played NL50 – NL100 on GG network (the asian network). The games are softer for sure, but I just really miss the fast games (talking about »occupational defect« lol); I just don't like the pace of regular tables and it has always been my dream to beat NL100 and NL200 fast games (obviously also NL500zoom, but I since I can't play on Stars anymore, crushing NL200 FF would do ).
My main problem is I have not been studying poker in these past 3 years almost at all. I have gotten myself into a »cooperation« with a coach in march 2016; which I hope is going to push me to the next level!

The results are slowly showing but I still feel I am not giving 100% from my part and that is one of the main reasons for starting a blog! I will try to update it as much as possible and keep myself accountable for everything that happens on my poker journey from now on!

The plan is to report how I do, track progression, describe my feelings, analyze hands, etc. I think my theoretical knowledge isn't THAT bad (obviously there is HUGE room for improvement), but I am quite poor at the mental game; which did improve a bit lately but I still have those moments, where I get coolered a couple of times in a short span of time and it immidiatelly and greatly affects my game for the remaining of the session/day.

So I feel talking about my game, hands, feelings, and other situations here will help me grow mentally and help me become a successful poker player!
I will probably start with NL50 Fast Forward games on Party Poker so I get back into the fast games and hopefully I will continue to NL100FF soon. My main goal will be improving my poker and mental game and hopefully I can get to a decent winrate at NL100FF by the end of January I guess!
I will try to keep this blog interesting so I'll try to post images from RL and keep you guys entertained!

I also own a 2-year old French Bulldog girl named Blu, and I'll showcase her here every now and then, she's a little devil! J
I think this will be it for now, my next post will probably be about the short-term goals and a more precise description of how I'll be doing my blog posts in the future.

I am looking forward to posting my progress and interacting with the community here!
Regards,
Jkob.

[Gerov1t]

Welcome Jaka, nice to see you here, your blog will definitely help younger players to see how professional takes his game to another level.
Let the gods of rng be kind to you!
p.s Little correction it's march 2017 not 2016

[minas]

Welcome man,i wish you a luck.

[J-kob]

Welcome man,i wish you a luck.

Hey minas, thanks a lot, I appreciate it!

Welcome Jaka, nice to see you here, your blog will definitely help younger players to see how professional takes his game to another level.
Let the gods of rng be kind to you!
p.s Little correction it's march 2017 not 2016

Hey, thanks a lot! Yeah, I hope this blog will motivate other people and show them how they can do things to hopefully improve their own game! And yes, of course, march 2017 haha

Anyway, I apologize for not making an update during the weekend, but I just haven't started with my Party Poker grind.

I have been thinking how to set everything up though. I will most likely also start streaming these games on a regular basis on twitch also, so I will probably start with NL25 FF when I start streaming. I'll have to think this through still. I kinda planned to grind 30k hands on NL25, analyze it and then go to NL50.

Basically the whole idea of this blog is for me to make frequent updates (like every day or every second day). I will not focus on financial gains as much (of course I will post results and graphs too), but I will mostly focus on putting in the volume and working on my game. This blog is also a kind of a way to show my coach I am really taking it seriously from now on, because I realize I did not work on my game ENOUGH during our collaboration so far! I am dead serious from now on and really want to go systematic about it and really improve my game!

So I will probably just post regularly on how much I have played, how I felt playing, gonna describe interesting situations, my feelings and also talk about what I am currently working on in terms of theory. I will post at least 1 hand every blog update, where I will try to analyze it and talk about my thought process (here all the feedback will be greatly appreciated).

I still need to get the BR to Party, so I intend to start with the grind in the coming days (hopefully tommorow!), and I will let you know as soon as I do!

That is all for now, I'll leave you with a picture of my dog since today she is celebrating 2 years!

[J-kob]

Hey guys, it's me again!

So I have started playing yesterday. I wanted to grind&stream for about 5 hours, but unfortunately I had to take my car to the mechanic, which took about 3 hours of my day so I wasn't able to play as much.

I have been 2 tabling NL25 FF on Party and will probably grind this for a couple more days then jump into the NL50 pool!

Hands played: 2064
Time: 3hr30min
Results:


I won't always be posting graphs, but why not every now and then!

I decided I will also watch at least one poker video every 2 days or read any other poker-related article just so to keep my mind working and thinking about poker!

I have not yet marked any hands, I'll do so today and I'll post some tommorow! That will be basically all for now, there is actually some sun outside, so I'm gonna head out with my dog then continue with the grind!

[J-kob]

Morning guys!

So we are through another day. It's been a semi-productive day, I've watched one poker video (from Paul Atwal, NL50z) and played a couple of hands. Today the session didn't go so well. It was one of those session where there is no big action going on, you're pretty much just grinding it through with only a couple of hands that ruin your result. I did almost got it back to $0 at the end but then the tides turned again and I also made a PF AI bluff and ended being down a bit more than 2BI (the last hand was me 3b/shoving A5s SBvsBU and he woke up with KK).

Hands played: 3700
Time: 5hr4min
Results:


I will post two AA hands today that I would like opinion on.

First hand:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a17c652d39043d7268b486f

Here it feels like no matter what we do preflop we look really strong. Should we just shove? Probably it's still better to just call right? And also about flop, we have about a PSB left, so should we just shove? Or would you take another line?

Second hand:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a17c716d39043e8298b4717

Here we have a bit of an awkward board for our hand. My question is, is this still a 3-street value hand on this board? I decided to check flop, then bet T + R (don't know why I chickened out and didn't value bet R). What is the usual approach in spots like this? If I have the ace of clubs I'm more comftorable betting all 3 streets as I don't mind getting it in on any street.

That will be all for today, I'll probably be a bit less active during the weekend but I'll still try and post updates and some interesting hands!

[J-kob]

Hey guys!

A bit of a non-online poker update! This is there is a National Championships events happening in Casino Perla, Nova Gorica. I am not a live tournament player (played one in the past) so was not really interested in this, except for one tournament. Every year there is also a Team event and we were playing it already 2 years ago, but with no visible results.

However, we decided to go play it again with 2 of my friends (one is Luka "CoreySteel" Kovac from PokerPro Slovenia). Making a great result was not at the top of the list, it was more of a opportunity to hang out, drink some beers, have really good time and maybe do well at the poker tables. Well as it turned out, we ended winning the event and becoming 2017 Team Event Champions!

It was really fun, we had tons of laughs and we actually managed to beat the other 32 teams! The tournament started at 7pm on Friday and we played all the way until 5am Saturday morning; it was exhausting, especially since we are not tournament players and we are not used to such play times! I personally was also really really happy about my play, I think I played super well, even managed to make a huge hero call right before we combined our stacks after level 12 (made a big call with A-high OTR vs K-high bluff!). After we combined the stack we rotated at the table every level of play. We were quite short most of the time but we somehow managed to get to HU, where we were 1:7 underdogs in chips!!! A couple of nice 60:40 holds actually put us in the lead and the final hand was our AQo vs Q4, which held and that was it! Buy-in was 150€ and the first place was around 1550€, so all in all a good day at the tables!

Not to mention, the 1hr30min ride home was really fun, mostly just reliving moments in the tournament haha. Well, on to the next one, and who knows, maybe I'll go and start playing MTTs now!

And for the end, a picture with the trophy:



As for the online adventure, had an ok day on Friday while yesterday was really shitty. Going to play some poker today too and I'll make a short report on Monday!

See you around!

[J-kob]

Sup guys!

Ok time for another update. I have played a decent amount of poker on friday before going to live tournament. I ended up the day with +$80 which was ok. On saturday and sunday I decided to play some NL50 which didn't go as well, lost a couple of BI, so we basically ended the weekend period down about $100. I don't think I played that badly, but hey, there is always room for improvement! Here's the 3-day graph:


I'll post some of the biggest losing hands:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a1bc08ad39043282b8b4845

JJ hand - this guy was a aggro fish, he's flop xr up to that point was 5/6. I would assume it's fine to just get it in OTF?


https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a1bc16ad39043bc6c8b47da

KK hand - great flop float! -.-


https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a1bc1c1d39043a3628b4800

53s hand - this guy is running hotter than sun vs me, he tilts me so much. But as for the hand, this should be an easy R fold right? He's a weak-tight reg.

I'll leave you with this, don't want to overspam the post with hands, I'll be back with more tommorow!

Regards,
Jkob.

[Gerov1t]

Morning guys!

So we are through another day. It's been a semi-productive day, I've watched one poker video (from Paul Atwal, NL50z) and played a couple of hands. Today the session didn't go so well. It was one of those session where there is no big action going on, you're pretty much just grinding it through with only a couple of hands that ruin your result. I did almost got it back to $0 at the end but then the tides turned again and I also made a PF AI bluff and ended being down a bit more than 2BI (the last hand was me 3b/shoving A5s SBvsBU and he woke up with KK).

Hands played: 3700
Time: 5hr4min
Results:


I will post two AA hands today that I would like opinion on.

First hand:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a17c652d39043d7268b486f

Here it feels like no matter what we do preflop we look really strong. Should we just shove? Probably it's still better to just call right? And also about flop, we have about a PSB left, so should we just shove? Or would you take another line?

I would just shove pre, without further reads i mean i don't expect them to cold 4bet very often for bluff so getting it in pre looks like most +ev spot, as for flop you can still bet small, you might get some lighter calls and overapirs to the board are getting in anyway with that pot to stack ratio

Second hand:

https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a17c716d39043e8298b4717

Here we have a bit of an awkward board for our hand. My question is, is this still a 3-street value hand on this board? I decided to check flop, then bet T + R (don't know why I chickened out and didn't value bet R). What is the usual approach in spots like this? If I have the ace of clubs I'm more comftorable betting all 3 streets as I don't mind getting it in on any street.

That will be all for today, I'll probably be a bit less active during the weekend but I'll still try and post updates and some interesting hands!

I like checking flop back, it's mixed strategy anyway so ev's are same, although without club we are betting somewhat more often and yes river is must value bet as you said.
On second thought this is nl25 so exploiting us by betting 3 streets here is probably more +ev than checking, we can't know for sure, but we can look at general tendencies and lock that spot in solver.
(reminder for some session in future)

[Gerov1t]

Congrats on winning state championship! Idemoooooo

p.s. 5high flush yep fold it is

[J-kob]

Hey Milan!

Yes, I thought it is gonna to be a mixed strategy to some extent. Ok, so we check back more often when we have AcAx? Makes sense. And yes, that 5high flush was a big mistake (mostly because the player tilted me so much, he ran like god vs us!).

Anyway, how is everyone doing guys? Hope you are doing well, I am fine, I have watched at least one video everyday which is great (Paul Atawal and ERA7ER).

Poker is not going super great. I am playing a decent amount which is super (especially considering I try to 2- or 3-table most of the time). Started the day really great but then it kinda went sideways for the second half of the day. I have to admit that again, my mental game was pretty weak, was just so easilly irratated by the same random regs. But that's actually fine, meaning my game is good, but I just need to not care about those suckouts and how people run vs me. I feel I'll turn it around soon!

Graph:


A few hands:


https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a1e6560d39043275d8b45c1

This guy was unknown at the point of the hand, did feel like he is a fish. Later on he turned out to be more of a whale, but without that in mind; can we ever fold? There are quite some combos we get owned by, but also we beat a shit ton of hands he could have right?


https://www.weaktight.com/h/5a1e65f7d3904385798b461f

Here the opponent seems regish. I absolutely hate my sizings, seems like I was out of focus here. I should just bet way bigger F + T. But as played, if we assume he xR some FDs OTF (and even if not), we probably get beat by a lot more than we win?

I'll leave you with that, looking forward to next coaching session and see you in a day or two!

[J-kob]

Damn it, having a really crappy start to my FF adventure. But hey, you know what they say: "what starts badly, ends well"!

The main problem I noticed I am having is mental stability. I think I am playing really well but I do feel I am getting really crappy runouts which actually make me pretty nervous during my sessions and definitely affect my future play. With FF, the hands are going so fast, that it is at all not uncommon to get coolered like 2 or 3 times in a matter of minutes. I did improve my mindset A LOT in the past year, but these kind of things (especially when really bad regs/fish start connecting with the board exceptionally well) really irratate me lately. Do you guys have similar experience, how do you cope with it?
Obviously it is integral that you try to keep your head cool, rerun the hand in your mind again and see if you did your best (if you did, that is all you can do and you should be feeling good about your play) and just move on. But yeah, sometimes easier said than done

This is yesterdays graph:


I have noticed that my blinds play is making me lose a lot of money, at least analyzing hands from the start of this blog (30k hands). My SB wr is 25bb/100 and my BB wr is 59bb/100. So I think I should focus on that a lot! I do feel like I defend a lot on BB (which is fine tbh) but then I am too passive postflop and not fighting for enough pots! I'll have to analyze that.

Btw guys, do you have any good videos to recommend to watch? I am trying to watch at least 1 poker video every 2 days, just to keep thinking about poker and see how other players think. I don't mind any good NL videos/producers, obviously if they play Zoom it's even better (so far I watched some videos from ElusiveMark, ERA7ER, Paul Attawal,...).

I'll post some hands during the weekend! But for now, just enjoy your friday and let's turn the trend around now!


Btw, the winter has officially started, brrrrr:

[J-kob]

Hey guys!

Sorry for a bit of a late report, but I haven't played all that much during the weekend, caught a cold so didn't feel like grinding =/ I did play some MTTs but with no major success, only a few mincashes. I played a $5.50 satellite for $109 ticket, won that one got a $22 ticket so was just one step away from getting that $109 ticket. Top 4 of that tournament got a ticket, I finished 5th! But good thing is, 5th got $104 in cash, which is probably even better for an mtt fish like me haha.

I'll just post 2 cash games hand today, have a question about those.


This is a hand versus a fish. Even though he is a fish is my line too aggressive? Would check back turn, bet river OR bet turn, check back river be better? I can definitely see him having some 9x, TT, JJ...but really not sure, probably they don't call 3 streets with 9x here...



This is versus a pretty loose guy that doesn't like to fold to 3bets at all. These are the spots I kinda feel lost, my first instinct now tells me I should probably be x/calling this flop. But what then?

I'll leave you with that for now, will have more in the coming days!

[J-kob]

Hey guys!

I'm really sorry for abandoning this blog, but quite a lot has happened and it kinda got forgotten! I do intend to make it alive again as I feel it's only fair to you guys and I still belive writting a blog will benefit me in the long run!

Well, the main reason for me not writting anymore is because I have changed the games! I was really into diving into cash games, was studying, trying to improve but I got demotivated over and over again everytime I started playing Fast Forward on party poker (fast games are my passion and I can't imagine playing cash games and not playing those), because of how nitty and reg-infested they were. I went weeks without even seeing a whale on the tables. Honestly, I felt sick of cash games at that point.

As I wrote in the blog, we went to a live tournament which we won (became national champions, hell yeah!) and I got hooked by MTTs. So I decided to give them a go!

So I have started playing MTTs in December. So far I'm am doing fine, no really huge binks yet but I'm feeling so good playing them. I found passion for poker again, I love learning about them, I love playing them and I always look forward to my sessions with Milan where I can improve even more!

I am currently playing $5.50 - $11 buy ins both on Party Poker and on Winamax (with an occasional misclick for a $109 BI, right Milan? ).

I won one $5.50 Early 8-max for about $260, won 3 $5.50 PLO tournaments for $150-$250. I am still waiting for a 4-figure win, but those will surely come, especially with bigger buy-ins.

Right now there is a great KO-series going on at Party Poker with decent overlays, so I'm happily playing that! I also won another $5.50 PLO tourney yesterday, I'll give you a screenshot:


I will try and post as often as I can. You can expect some nice screenshots from my results and hopefully a decent amount of theory debate as I have A LOT still to learn about MTTs!

Hopefully you guys will like it and we can have a really great time!

P.S.: How many of you play MTTs here? Feel free to let me know what Buy-ins you play and what are your biggest scores, I'd really like to see it

Jkob.

[Gerov1t]

(with an occasional misclick for a $109 BI, right Milan? ).


Jkob.

Yeah missclick riight

ATTENTION!!! DANIEL IF YOU READ THIS, IT'S NOT ALLOWED TO MISSCLICK REGISTER ON HIGH STAKES