The Streak Continues!

After another week, I’m happy to say that the streak is still alive and I have yet to book a losing session. Well, that’s not entirely true I guess. I lost $200 at a .5/.5 NLH/PLO/SHOP home game hosted by Zach (Shout out to Zach for the semi-suck out). But as far as my live-casino play goes, I’m currently on a nine session win streak. It feels great to start out my shot at making it as a live pro on the biggest upswing of my life. I’m aware that I’m running very well and certainly above EV, but I believe I’ve been playing some of the best poker of my life. My confidence is definitely at an all-time high.

As far as this week has gone, I’ve played 4 sessions (including the home game) for a total of 25 hours and a profit of $1,924. I was lucky enough to find a great 2/5 game running late on Friday night which I hopped into for an hour or so before it broke. In a lot of ways, the game was better than a typical Friday-night 1/3 game. The lineup was made up of a decent TAG-grinder, four loose-passive middle aged recreational players, and three spewy whales with seemingly deep pockets and an itch to gamble. Before the game broke, the three of them were sticking in $200-400 stacks blind like it was nothing. So yea, it was a dream game and I was lucky enough to take about $600 off of one of them in a 4bet pot with KK where we got it in on a 763r flop. 2/5 games rarely run at The Jack and when they do they’re often made up of decent, thinking recreational players and a handful of pros or semi-pros which often makes 1/3 a more profitable game to play in my opinion. I was happy I was able to spot and capitalize on this specific line-up.

The lack of volume I was able to put in this week was the result of a couple things. One was that I was focusing on reaching my studying goal of 10 hours, which I will reach after I study for an hour today and tomorrow. The other was that I had an unexpected visit from my girlfriend which distracted me a bit (in a good way) and kept me away from the tables for a couple days.

My study material for the week consisted of Matthew Janda’s Applications of No-Limit Hold’em, Crush Live Poker training videos, a couple of poker-podcasts (including Just Hands, of course), and staying active on the forums at Two Plus Two. I’ve found that Applications of No-Limit Hold’em is similar to Ed Miller’s Poker’s 1% in that it discusses a Game Theory based strategy which can be used to play in a completely balanced and unexploitable fashion. What I like about Applications is that it goes into far more in depth than Poker’s 1% in that Janda gives the reader mathematical explanations to things such as to why we should defend x% of our range in certain spots and why we need to have a flop bluff:value ratios of x:y. The downside to Janda’s book is that the strategy he outlines is more applicable to playing against highly skilled opponents, which are rare in the LLSNL player-pool. Still, I think it’s important to have an understanding of what a balanced strategy looks like and the theory behind it and I’d certainly recommend this book to more experienced players looking to improve their game.

For the upcoming week, my goals will remain the same as they’ve been. I’d like to start upping my volume goal in the near future, but I want to have a week where I reach all of my goals before I do so. I’m also hoping I play at least one interesting hand that I can write about for you guys. So far, I really haven’t found myself in many tough/questionable spots, likely due to the run-good I’ve been enduring. I’m about to go study for a bit and then play a session, so I’ll talk to you guys next week. Until then, may the run-good be with you.

#JonMetz #rungood #jackcasino