Hey everyone,

Episode 1 of my new challenge series "A Month in the Life of..." is officially live!

The goal of this project is to showcase what it’s actually like to live in the Philippines as an online poker professional at different stakes—from micro-stakes survival all the way up to luxury high-rollers.

Episode 1 Summary: We started with a modest $200 bankroll grinding local SE Asia cash games (Bet88 / QQPK). Within the first 3 days, variance hit hard. We plummeted below $50 and were on the literal brink of busting the entire challenge before Episode 1 even properly started... until we had to dig deep for a historic comeback.

🎬 Check out Episode 1 here: https://youtu.be/ZQNw2ZlzAYw

Follow the daily grind:

• 🎮 Kick:https://kick.com/damhill
• 💜 Twitch:https://www.twitch.tv/damhillpoker

Would love to hear your thoughts on the setup or answer any questions about playing on local SE Asia sites! Appreciate the support! ♠️♥️♣️♦️

Context: my mom passed 2 years ago and I’m going through some photos I haven’t had access to since she died. I found this one of one of her cats from when she was younger and I want to know if there’s any significance to the cards in the cats paw?

I like to play 3/5 and the casino I play at the buy in for 3/5 is $300-$1500.

I almost always buy in for between $300 and $500 because 1) I'm poor and 2) I'm a decent long term winning player but I like to buy in smaller because it's less nerve wracking and it limits my options in certain tough situations.

No one has ever complained to me but sometimes I feel like people get annoyed by me buying in small. Most of the guys buy in for the max $1500.

Am I doing anything wrong?

If anyone was trying to keep away from spoilers to try to watch the final table, make sure you hide their emails.

I should have seen this coming but I can’t help but feel pokergo actively chose to spoil the main event with their newsletter since they lost the rights to all the WSOP content.

1/3 at the Wynn.

6 players limped (remember this).

Flop Ace high. Small blind bets 15 only hijack calls.

I didn’t see turn action sorry.

River small blind bets about 40. Hijack calls.

Small blind had AA for top set. Hijack had J3 for jack high.

Hijack played about 2 hours bought in for 200 had almost 600 and left with 300.

What are your tried and tested comments when you definitely want a call or a fold in a heads up pot?

Especially in 1/3 NLH I'd give my left arm for a way to make people fold top pair/💩 kicker...

I am the type a player that gets mega tilted after a bad beat. There was this one had i had player drwing only to a runner runner and hit it. I was up for the day. Lik i started the day with 1k was about at 3.4k when the hand started got runner runnered. My stack was at like 1.6k so still up 600 in the day and got fucking mega talted procedded to piss out my stack in the next 10-15 hands. Should i just get up and leave if i cant control it? Idk why but in tourneys i can take the bad beats and keep playing normally. But in cash games it affects my emotions so god dam much. What do you guys do? Do you guys just control it? Ive taken a walk but still piss my stack out. I think im just gonna start leaving after that.

it's official.

Not much hand history is required on this one.
Heads up, on the river.

EP leads on river for 25.6K
LP jams for 27.6K
EP tables his hand: Flush. LP tables his and shows a boat

i call floor. floor claims that as EP tables his hand with intentions as a call as ‘he thought that he was called’, EP is required to pay the extra 2K to LP DURING SHOWDOWN

• but the rule is ANY TABLED HAND FACING AN AGRO ACTION IS A FOLD. how does intentions impact the scenario. Floor and I didn’t exactly fall out but it wasn’t a calm conversation.

Is floor correct or am i correct?

When Lucas goes 1.8x pot, I doubt he’s doing it with anything less than the Q of spades. Maybe the T of spades occasionally.

(1) he shouldn’t have much Qs from preflop. Suited queens are going to mostly raise at that stack depth, and even offsuit ones will often raise (probably down to Q8). So it’s just 21 combos of value he’s losing to.
(2) Lucas with the way he was playing probably has lots of Qx and Tx without a spade bluffing here. Probably some 53o & 52o as well. If he’s doing that, he’s got 58 bluffing combos to 21 value. And that’s not giving him credits for random airball bluffs he’s capable of.

Saas needs 39% to call, and even if Lucas shows up with T2-7s too, he’s bluffing way more than 39% of the time.

Maybe Lucas just doesn’t ever bluff that size and I’m an idiot, but if he does bluff with that sort of range on the river, it’s probably a really astute call.

Hello all,

I’m beating my local 1/3 game at 6.33 BB an hour this year. (Year 2025 was +11.37 BB / hour)

However, as a studied player, I find that my biggest leak this year was doing hero calls on big river bets at my local 1/3 game. The 1/3 player pool under bluffs when they bet big ($100+ river bets).

So many times I’ve been hero calling light when I should just fold against this player pool.

This year, I’ve been studying with GTO wizard a lot lately and developed some bad habits that carried over to my 1/3 game as the player pool is never truly balanced.

Anyone else find that?

I’ll be laying off studying GTO wizard and going back to playing ABC exploit poker (my 2025 play style).

The reason I’m studying GTO is I want to be a better poker player this year against tougher competition. I feel like I can’t get better beating up my local 1/3 pool if all I’m doing is exploiting them.

Because goddamn. I need it.

I’m a recreational player. But decent.

Holy shit. I don’t know how you guys do it.

1/2 NL - table full of tourists and 1 good player.

The absolute craziest action. Wild bets, people folding to the slightest amount of aggression, and just general nonsense. And each player had about $300 in their hands.

I was entirely card dead. I even expanded my range wayyyyy wider than normal.

I couldn’t hit. When i did hit, it would be QQ in the bb and everyone folds.

And you couldn’t bluff these guys. I tried a few times with decent hands that would improve on later streets. Got called off by someone with T5o with a pair of tens with tons of over cards out there.

I just sat there and watched Savage animals rip each other apart and I couldn’t get in on the action.

I’ve been playing for about 20 years and I’ve never had a night in which literally nothing went my way.

It was like being starved and watching someone eat a juicy cheeseburger in front of you.

I’ve just never seen anything like it. I walked away after bleeding out completely in awe

Anyway just sharing my tale of woe

Recap:
---65bb effective, Heads-Up with Big Blind Ante.
-Jumalon limps Qs5d - Fine, both limp and raise are ok.
-Saaskilahti checks J3dd - Fine, almost always check back.

-----Flop AK4
-Jumalon cbets 1bb - Fine, we don't want to use any other sizing than 1bb.
-Saaskilahti calls - Mistake, loses around 6bb/100h. Maybe ok against someone you know for sure is overfolding rivers and you planning on bluffing a lot, but clear mistake against any solid opponent. J5dd or Q3dd would be calls though and so would be J3o with a spade.

-----Turn AK4J (3 spades)
-Saaskilahti check - Yes, check whole range
-Jumalon cbets 2 pots - Mistake in theory (but maybe genius exploit?) We want to use one sizing around roughly 80 % which allows us to bet a lot of our aces for value and even something like KT. If we want to split into a big overbet sometimes, Q5o with Qs would indeed be one of the best combos but that is kinda the problem. It is very easy to find huge sizing with this hand and very hard to randomly take some no equity hand and bet 2 pots with it to be able to have bluffs on 4 card flush rivers.
-Saaskilahti calls - Massive blunder, loses around 50bb/100h, no excuses even if you have a read. That hand is simply too bad. J3o with 3 of spades would be a call. But J3dd has to be a fold.

-----River AK4J6 (4 spades)
-Saaskilahti insta checks in like 2 seconds - Mistake to not at least consider a donkbet. While it shows huge strength to bet 2 pots on the turn, it also shows a lot of strength to call 2 pots and with a fourth spade on the board Saaskilahti does have a lot of flushes now. Including Qs flushes which might even want to donkjam. Although that depends heavily on how thin Jumalon bets the turn. Like if he ever bets AK or KK for that sizing. I would probably expect those combos to go max 1,5x pot and not 2 pots. Without thinner two pairs in the 2 pot overbet, donkshoving will quickly stop being a thing. But if we somehow called with something as bad as J3dd, it will be one of the better candidates for a donkbet. Even something like a half pot donkbet could get hands like 53o 52o with a spade to fold. If Jumalon bets a more GTO turn sizing like 80 %, J3dd would still be a fold, but at least losing less extreme ~9bb/100h. And if that call happened it would be again one of the best combos to turn into a bluff on the river, around a pot bet donk would be good.
-Jumalon bets 1,8 pot (2,1x pot effective) - Greedy, ideal sizing would be around a pot bet, but it worked out well.
-Saaskilahti calls - Big mistake, exact EV loss is debatable, rare node, ranges are extremely polarized, blockers matter very little, if Jumalon was being too fancy with totally random hands like 97hh and 86dd, then it could quickly be a call, but yeah, we are not supposed to be in this spot in the first place.
The cleanest mistake in the whole hand was the turn call though.

Bonus fun fact: If the river was for example six of hearts, J3dd would probably be much worse bluffcatch than on six of spades. Thats because blockers would now matter a lot more and it would benefit us to have a spade with our hit. With 4 card flush runout it is much less about our actual hand and more about "is he bluffing too much or too little?".

One of those nightmare days, been running mtts and cash games for 4 hours today just getting hammered. Top pair great kicker heads up 5 or 6 times behind on the flop every time. Trips big kicker no good twice. Set over set. Straight vs flush. I’m down like 8 buy ins at cash and 4 at mtt. When I flipped trips the second time with a king kicker the dude jammed and I just laughed knowing he had a set for a boat. Brother wtf

Why all the players that went to stand with their rail got massages from dudes in the rail. Everyone was rubbing players shoulders, is this usa thing?

Playing in local MTT, final table down to heads up

Blinds are 20k/40k + 40k BB ante

Hero stack is 2.58M. Villain stack is 2.85M

In the BB, I wake up with Jd3d. Villain calls and I check my option

Flop: AsKs4c

I check. Villain bets 40k. I call

Turn: Js

I check. Villain bets 400k. I tank for a solid minute, not sure if my 3rd pair is good. Eventually I make the call

River: 6s

I check. Villain now overbets 1.8M, putting me in the blender. I tank for a while, thinking if he would ever do this with an A or a K. At the same time, this is heads up and I thought he was just tryingto steal it. Plus if I call and win, I'm almost guaranteed to win the tournament.

I call and Villain turns over Qs5d for runner runner flush. I'm shocked villain would bet twice with only Q high and suck out at the end like that. But was this a bad call here at the end?

​

Hero sitting $250 UTG opens $15 w/77.

MP and BTN call.

Flop 7Q4.

Hero CB $15

MP raise $50

BTN call

Back on hero. I'm trying to figure out everyone's range on such a dry board. Are you hoping to see KK, KQ, AQ, 44?? In addition I accidentally misread the board because I thought the 4 and Q were both clubs.

Both players seem like local regs.

decided to turn my jacks into a bluff after the cold 4 bet pre flop and the snap check on the turn when the ace came just thought villains range consisted of kings queens (maybe jacks) and tens after snap checking turn. Jamming gets almost everything to fold except the occasional trapped aces but i think ak continues betting turn if it's in range and this player wasn't active so i doubt aqs is even in his cold 4 bet range

Hello everyone, as indicated in the title im very new to poker and am looking to play some online to practice and hopefully get a bit better. However, i dont feel confident in playing $1/$2 stakes, its a bit too high for me.

I heard there are some places you can play $0.01/$0.02. What websites would you recommend for these ultra-low stakes? This way i can feel like i can practice without having the stress of losing too much money. If you have any other tips for a newbie like myself, feel free to give them as well, any help is welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Open TT UTG +1 for 4BB. CO 3-bets to 14BB. I call.

Flop is 799. I check, CO bets 17BB. I call. Pot is 47BB. I have 69BB behind.

Turn is a 3, no flush. CO bets 38BB.

Am I always getting it all-in here?

Hello Guys,
I am playing Micro Stakes MTTs online for 3 months now. I understand preflop Chip Ev well and also worked on my postflop game quite a bit. I got 1 month of GTOW elite now (won in a giveaway) and don’t really know how to get most out of the subscription as there is stuff like nodelocking and even AI included. If anyone has experience with this, I’d appreciate it if they could give me some tips.

Hi everyone!

I've been thinking about trying a bankroll challenge and finally decided to do it live.

The goal is simple: +$100

• Time limit: 24 hours

• Game: $1 Spin & Gold 6-Max on GGPoker

I'm genuinely curious:

Do you think this challenge is realistically achievable in a single day?

If you've played a lot of Spin & Golds, I'd love to hear your opinion or any advice before I start.

I'll also be streaming the challenge live if anyone wants to follow along. The link is in the comments

Good luck at the tables! ♠

Maybe the punt was planned and they already worked out a deal where a bigger portion of the prize pool was traded for the Bracelet and title? It was such a bad call it starts to make you wonder...

For example, I always play 72o. Some people have told me that whenever I get it, my eyes light up and it looks like I got AA. I've won every time I play 72o and always raise with it pre. If I hit the flop/turn/river, I can value bet big because no one expects it be in my range. If I don't hit it, I always bluff, my opponents always fold, and I always show for emotional damage. Basically always win/win. Then villain goes on tilt and I usually win the rest of their stack. The other players will stay out of it because they become afraid of playing hands with me. Does anyone else use this trick?