Journey Through Crushing the Micros with MDA!
Hi Everyone!
I've been a 2+2 reader for a little bit, but I'm just getting around to finally making my first post! First, I want to give a little backstory about myself.
I started playing online poker about 1 year ago for fun/entertainment with some friends at microstakes. I was quickly hooked and was determined to journey through the low microstakes of 5NL and beyond. However, things weren't as easy as I suspected and I had been stuck at 5NL for some time now. The good news was now I had around a 100k+ hand sample size to analyze and find my leaks/weaknesses. I had been trying to learn/apply GTO to my game, but a little while ago I realized I was a little bit out of my depth and should try to focus on something a bit more important for microstakes: the population. It was this time that my friends and I learned about mass data analysis (MDA) and how we could use our hand samples to exploit population tendencies. The great part about this was I could start developing a strategy catered towards my player pool rather than solely relying on GTO.
With the help of my and my friend's hand samples, I think I have developed an MDA based strategy that will allow me to crush my way through the micros! I hope to document my journey here and share what is working/not working, etc. I hope to have great success and maybe even help some folks along the way! For now, I hope to reach 50NL within the next 6 months if possible. My current volume goal is around 25,000 hands per month (6,250 hands per week).
Guidelines for my journey are below and thanks for reading/following!
P.S. my requirements for 5NL to 10NL are a bit smaller due to me already having some initial success with my strategy at 5NL during initial testing
Guidelines:
Moving up:
5NL -> 10NL (15 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 20,000 hands)
10NL -> 25NL (40 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 40,000 hands)
25NL -> 50NL (40 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 50,000 hands)
Moving down:
Net loss of +10 buyins, move down and recoup
4 Replies
The final push!
Hey all, I know I said I wouldn't make a 9.5 week update, but here's just a super mini one because I'm making a final push for this thread! The goal was to get to 50NL and I am possibly just 5k hands away from that. My move up requirements for 25NL is 25-30 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 @ 25,000-30,000 hands. Well, I'm currently at 25 buyins at 20,000 hands! I've decided with my New Year's goals/challenges I'd like to conclude this thread and move on to the next thread for the rest of 2024. With that, I will play another 5,000 more hands at 25NL and if I'm still 25-30 buyins at 25,000 hands, I'll consider it a success!!! Wish me luck 😀
Last 5k hands
25NL results so far
Week 10 - Concluded!
I honestly can't believe I'm here with my initial goals completed in 2.5 months, but it happened! I put in the last 5k hands the rest of this week and managed to finish 25NL with 28 buyins and 11.1bb/100 (14.1evbb/100) over 25,000 hands. I will put 25NL results down below as well as a total results summary of the blog. With this, I will be officially concluding this thread and moving on to my 2024 goals/challenges thread so please follow me [COLOR="Blue"][U]here[/U][/COLOR] if you are interested!
I really did run very hot through this entire run which I am very glad about, but I believe I was able to prove that my MDA strat worked quite well from 5NL-25NL. I did somewhat expect the strat to work very well from 5NL all the way to 25NL, but I definitely noticed some improvements in the regs as I went up. Fish were always fish as usual 😀 . I do want to mention however, I was very fortunate to be invited to a great small group where I have been able to really improve my MDA tools and skills (shoutout to the group!). I ended up making some slight adjustments to my strat near the end of my 25NL run, but I will be really diving into things for 2024 and I even hope to add some GTO into my study mix.
Thanks again for following and stay tuned in my new thread!
Total 25NL Results
Total results from 5NL-25NL
5NL: 8,854 hands, 21.5bb/100 (20.8evbb/100), 18 buyins won
10NL: 25,200 hands, 12.4bb/100 (11.4evbb/100), 31 buyins won
25NL: 25,238 hands, 11.1bb/100 (14.1evbb/100), 28 buyins won
Yea I think it's always good to try to play on softer sites because you will have higher winrates. I'm sure you'll improve by playing tougher opponents, but I would hate to sit at a table full of them. Soft sites are great because you can sit with multiple fish at once and you'll definitely run into decent players as well. I think you'll get plenty of improvement from playing softer sites as well 😀
Hey, so I feel like such an idiot for playing on ACR for so long. I guess I thought all online poker was basically the same and site didn't matter etc. Kinda like how all low stakes cash 1/3 & 2/5 is decently similar. But I started playing on ignition and goddamn it is so much softer than ACR. over like 2 months on ACR playing 2NL, 5NL, 10NL and tracking results I was up like $160ish, and in 2 days on ignition I made $220 lol at mainly 10NL & some 25NL. 25NL 6max ignition feels akin to 5NL on ACR, depending on table.
Think I'm gonna switch over to ignition full time. Only thing is I'm on a Mac and PT4 won't work for ignition, so I have to get a new HUD.
Hey, so I feel like such an idiot for playing on ACR for so long. I guess I thought all online poker was basically the same and site didn't matter etc. Kinda like how all low stakes cash 1/3 & 2/5 is decently similar. But I started playing on ignition and goddamn it is so much softer than ACR. over like 2 months on ACR playing 2NL, 5NL, 10NL and tracking results I was up like $160ish, and in 2 days on ignition I made $220 lol at mainly 10NL
Don't beat yourself up! I think there is merit to both sites for sure. But yea generally Ignition is going to be softer than ACR. Glad you are having success! I like to use DriveHUD for Ignition, but not sure if that works well on Mac.
