cardbeam

Ouch!

2010-04-26T06:16:00.001-07:00

After a record breaking week last week I suffered a back breaking week this week. I'm down about $150 from my last update, but over $200 from my peak. While this does not make me feel great, it is totally expected to go on runs like this. It's actually a bit of a surprise that I haven't done this yet, and certainly good to have run myself up nearly $300 the week before to cover it.

I'm still well on pace to meet my goals. Unfortunately instead of running at nearly twice my expected rate, I am merely about 25% ahead of budget. There were a few days this week where I swear every overpair I held ran into a set, and every set that I had ran into a flush, but so it goes.

Once again the silver lining has turned out to be gold. For the second consecutive month I've qualified for the Ironman Gold medal on Full Tilt. In fact, I haven't missed a day in April yet. The gold medal will end up being worth about $75 once the mid-year bonuses clear sometime in July.

In other news, I've also reformatted the results table on the sidebar. I will offer monthly updates on the table, while still reaching for weekly post updates.

Monster Week

2010-04-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

Some big news this week. First of all, my tracking software is F'd up so I have no idea how many hands i've played. Besides that, I made $258 in the meantime. Most of that came from my new crack addiction, that is, Super Turbo Sit-N-Go tournaments.

Starting stacks are 300 with 15/30 blinds, and blinds got up every few minutes.

I can't decide if I like the 6-person, 9-person, or 45-person versions. Whichever you choose, be ready to shove your pocket kings and get called in two spots by KT and A2. Also, I've been a huge luckbox. I've played four 45-person games and taken 1st, 1st, 3rd, and 7th. $12 investment with a $150 return.

Add about $40 for rakeback (my biggest week yet at that) and a pretty solid week on regular ring games and it's my biggest week yet. Sweet.

Boom Boom Pow

2010-04-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

So I had my first losing week last week, no biggie. This week was rather chaotic. Seems that I was up $100 then down the same about three times. Thankfully I ended the week with a good long session, along with clearing Full Tilt's "Take 2" promo which was an automatic $25.

Final story for the week:

+$30 rakeback
+$25 bonus
+$14 actual poker profits
+$69 for the week

Total profit so far is a handy $555, still far outpacing my original expectation.

I've logged 34.3k hands (compared to 33k estimate) in a total of 50 hours. Averaging better than $11 per hour.

It seems like the limit Rush games have reached a sort of equalibrium. The games are almost completely dead (maybe 20-30 people seated) during the day. In the evenings it gets up to the 60-80 range fairly frequently still. Not great, but it's still worth playing. I've decided to stop trying to multi-table the regular games as long as there are enough Rush players handy. It kills my action at lunchtime, but I'm toying with the idea of playing turbo SNG's during lunch again. That's where I cut my teeth back in the day, so I should be able to stay afloat fairly easily.

It's just that the lunchtime schedule makes multi-tabling real games real tough, but I'd still like to get some action in. I'm going to do some more research on this, but don't be surprised to see me playing the $5 SNG's in the near future.

In other news, I played in the monthly freeroll again. This time I was about 30 minutes late due to extenuating circumstances, so when I finally showed up I was down to about 800 chips with blinds at 40/80. Pretty much right into shove or fold territory. I waited about two orbits and found myself with TT on the button. After everyone folded I pushed and was insta-called by the BB with J6o. Flop was junk, turn was junk, river was a Jack. Done. Oh well.

First place was over $3500, so it's definitely worth playing these things every month. I just hope I can cash in on something someday. I think the best strategy (for me) would be to just double up a couple times and fold my way into the money while waiting for aces or kings.

Finally, in April I'm on pace in all 11 days to make Ironman Gold again. That'd be a steady $100/month value for me that's not factored into my profit yet (since I haven't actually been paid any of it yet), and that's pretty awesome imo.

What a difference a day makes!

2010-04-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

A thousand hands and 1.5 hours of play later I'm at a new peak, despite my poor performance last week. Currently sitting on $566 in profit.

And for a double whammy, I'm expecting $25 in bonus from a promo Full Tilt is running, along with my normal ~$20ish in rakeback.

A pretty good start to the week imo.

Mwah, mwah, mwahhhh...

2010-04-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

I logged my first losing week this year. Not a total killer, but sucks either way. The good news is that I made up my volume goal to reach 28k hands. So I lost $35 in 5k hands this week. No big deal.

I've been playing around with software to cover myself if Rush dries up. There are several versions of software that manage the tables for you while you play. I'd have to play about 12 tables at a time to meet the same volume as I get with four Rush tables. I don't think this will be a problem once I get the software going.

In other news, it's nice outside! This might become a problem for my bottom line for two reasons. First, my boys are going to have me outside playing ball and skateboarding pretty much every day until 8 o'clock. Second, my wife's business will be picking up during the summer, and I'll be on retainer for that. Still, as easy as it's been to get 5k hands/week so far I don't think it will be a problem.

Goals for April:
1) 20k hands of .5/1
2) Achieve Gold medal for Ironman
3) profit ldo

My proudest poker achievement -- GOLD MEDAL BABY!!!

2010-04-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

I started playing Rush poker in mid-February and it took me a week or so to hit my stride, so I was going full speed during March. Now that March is complete, I've officially qualified for a Gold medal in Full Tilt's Ironman program.

This means that I got at least 100 "points" (around 500 hands) in each of 25 separate days during March. The hardest thing I've ever struggled with online isn't winning, it's putting in the volume day in and day out. I did it, and I don't show any signs of slowing down. If anything, I'll be adding more tables.

Monetarily, the Ironman system is a little complicated, but essentially the Gold medal is worth in the neighborhood of $100. If I get Gold month after month, the value increases as well. So if I'm averaging 25 hours per month, that's about $4 per hour in bonus.

I'm getting around $100 per month in rakeback on top of that, so there's another $4 per hour.

If I average 1 BB/100 hands (which I've done now for the last 26k hands), I will pretty much double that. So I could realistically expect to see $15/hour or more over the next year, which for my goal of paying for Disneyworld would give me almost $5k by next March.

Plenty for a killer family vacation, with enough left over for a return to Vegas as well.

A final little bonus is that I'm starting to really rack up the Full Tilt points for their store. While not a super deal, this will add roughly another $0.75 per hour in value. The problem is it will take me a whole year to save up for anything worth buying. Comparing this to a regular job, that's like getting a nice little Christmas bonus. Basically it would amount to a new ipod Touch after about 1 year at my current volume of play.

I've always felt that if I could somehow manage to play lots of hands, the money would really kick in and fuel my desire to play more. So far that's exactly what's happening.

Hangin tough

2010-03-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

Update for the week:

Well, good news and bad news. The bad news is I suffered a $90 downswing this week. But the good news is I'm still up almost $100 for the week.

I'm a little behind my pace for total hands played, but I'm keeping it close so I'm not worried about that.

Totals so far: 22,887 hands, $521 profit, still over $15 per hour.

As an aside, I've been playing the Rush games almost exclusively, and I've noticed that the limit Rush tables are getting pretty short. Where a no-limit Rush table will have 800+ people, the limit game is lucky to have over 100. And last week I noticed at the off-peak times of day where I used to see 50-60 people there are now zero. So I'm a little worried about my bread and butter game drying up.

So I searched for some help. My biggest problem before was getting many tables running and managing them. Turns out there's a great script someone wrote to stack tables and control the action for massively multitabling. I installed it last night and it worked beautifully. It even works for multiple sites at once.

If anyone is interested I can link it. For now I forgot the name of it.

The only real problem I'll have now is still finding enough tables on FT to maximize the number of hands I'm in. Full ring limit just isn't very popular with the masses. Last night I had four Rush tables going and about three or four regular tables going. If Rush dies completely my volume will likely be cut in half if I have to rely on the regular full ring games. But there the waiting lists kill my volume. Since I typically only play 20-30 minutes at a time, if I spend 5-10 minutes on a waiting list it's a huge waste of time.

I might need to deposit on PokerStars just to get access to more tables to play. Either that or start mixing in some 6-max tables.

Week 5 update

2010-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Another solid week for me. It's getting to the point where I expect to win $30 every time I sit down, so losing $12 like I did last night felt worse than when I used to lose $50. Emotional variance I guess.

So for a running grand total, I've played 17483 hands in 26.06 hours (670 hands/hour).

I've made 1.52 BB/100 and with bonus and rb I'm up $432.90 overall for a whopping $16.61 per hour. As you can see by the table on the left I'm about a month ahead of schedule already.

One side note: I've locked up a bronze medal in Full Tilt's Ironman program. This is the first time I've ever been able to do this, and to top it off I'm quite certain I'll end up with a silver this month.

I'm starting to get to the point in my bankroll that I'm considering adding a table of 1/2 to the mix. I don't think I've very comfortable with that just yet, but it's probably going to happen soon.

Quads again.

2010-03-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

So I was sitting down for some maintenance hands just to see if I could get my auto-import hand history working right again and in less than five minutes I was down almost $20. WTF? Every hand would flop a flush draw and get sandwiched between raisers, or pair + gutshot type hands. Or double barreling AK when I missed the flop. Ahhhh!

I said screw it and contrary to every instinct decided to play my way out of it just because I was mad.

So I started by committing another cardinal sin of poker... open limping. Pocket 4's under the gun limped and immediately raised by UTG+1. Cold-called by MP, called by BB. I called. Flop bottom set with two clubs on board. I check to UTG+1 who bets. MP raises, BB calls. I call. UTG+1 calls.

Turn is another club, but also a 4 (lol quads!!!!!!!). I check again to UTG+1 who bets, MP raises, BB calls again. This time I 3-bet. UTG+1 caps, called around. So now I'm hoping I'm facing the nut flush and kings full. I bet the river and unfortunately just get called by UTG+1 and MP. $24 pot. All of a sudden I'm up about $6 in my mini-session and close the tables and count my blessings.

btw, UTG had JJ with Jack of clubs. MP had KQo.

Yes sir. Online poker still has bad players playing. Just make quads.

Graph of poker so far

2010-03-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

Woo! I (continue to) run good

2010-03-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

A short week for me, but a good one. 5.33 hours and 2,968 hands. 3.3 BB/100. Awesome.

Overall, 14,292 hands in 21.3 hours. 1.25 BB/100.

My total profit including bonus is over $335, or $15.72 per hour. I'm running better than I expected, but not necessarily better than I could achieve over the long term. A portion of my profit so far is $80 of cleared bonus from Full Tilt. If you take that out of the equasion I would be somewhere around $13 per hour.

If you look at my original goals I'm right on track with hands played (which is the only part I can truly control), and way ahead of schedule for winnings.

Last night's session was another roller coaster. Down about 30 BB's in about five minutes. Stuff like sets losing to a flush. Standard, but costly. Then all of a sudden I got wrapped up into about a half dozen big pots that swung me up about 60 BB's in no time. Flopping a set in a five-way capped pot. Making crying calls with just one pair in big pots when the action showed me I was beat, but holding up anyway. Once again I found myself with quads and being bet into. "Okay... I raise."

Good stuff. And the most important thing I'm learning right now is that poker is still fun for me. Even in the -30 BB in five minutes moments, I still like pounding out hundreds of hands of Rush poker. It goes so fast I don't have time to feel bad about losing a big pot. I don't have time to get bored and browse the internet or turn my mind to other things. It's the perfect balance of focus and enjoyment. The hands happen just fast enough for me to keep track of the action and make a good decision, but not slow enough to give me any extra time to let my thoughts wander.

One of my goals is going to be tough to meet. I assumed after four weeks of 3-tabling Rush that I'd be ready to add a 4th table. I haven't been able to do that comfortably yet. I've tried a few times and always get a little too overwhelmed. Right now I'm averaging just shy of 700 hands per hour. That seems to be my comfort zone.

On a side note, I'm on track for making Gold level in Full Tilt's Ironman program. If I can manage that month over month (it would take at least an hour on each of 20+ days in a month), and their mid-year bonus offer happens like last year, it will mean an extra $75 per month in bonus. That would be worth almost $4 per hour on it's own. Plus rakeback. Plus what I win at poker. I think $10 per hour is very sustainable. $15/hour isn't out of the question.

Disney, here we come.

Early update for the week

2010-03-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

Alas, I will not be able to make my standard Monday morning update. I will be in Las Vegas. I'm leaving tomorrow morning and I will return Tuesday night. I'm sure I'll have a good story to post.

In the meantime, I'll update my progress so far this week. Overall another decent showing. I'm up to about $285 profit over 13.5k hands. Not too many hands this week, but I made a good show of it. +$80 for the week in 2.5k hands. That's well above average so I'm pretty pleased.

But a note on variance. Limit hold'em is not for the weak-willed. I sat down yesterday during my lunch hour for 45 minutes and lost over $45. Then in about 20 minutes after work I won back over $40 of that, plus cleared $10 more in bonus. So I pretty much just ripped up a $50 bill at lunch time and threw it in the garbage, only find one sitting there waiting for me when I got home. Fun stuff.

Also, I spent an hour or so at our local casino this week to warm myself up for Vegas. I bought in for 1/2NL and won $58 in an hour. On the walk out I decided (in the spirit of Las Vegas) that the extra $8 of that would be well suited to a few pulls on the slot machine. Three pulls later I cashed out $60 and went home. Overall that hour of fun paid for my Vegas hotels for the weekend.

My only worry is that I'm peaking too soon... I need to time this lucky streak just right. Take care.

Suck it.

2010-03-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Here's to flopping quads and being bet into, turning trips after flopping bottom pair, runner-runner nut flushes that get capped on the river and otherwise being generally incapable of doing anything wrong. +$60 in 51 minutes. I also found out I'm qualified for the $20k freeroll that my rakeback provider hosts. Ship it!

I have to get my gloating out now before I hit my next 100BB downswing.

Still going strong...

2010-03-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

A total of 5.7 hours and 3749 hands. Up $68.80 in poker, plus $25 more in rakeback/bonus. Yes, I ran pretty good this week, but my overall win rate is 0.81 BB/100. While I'm very happy with this, it's by no means an unsustainable number.

So the total since I (re)started is 11.7k hands in 17 hours, for a total profit of $204, for $12/hour.

Rush Poker has changed my life

2010-03-02T06:17:00.000-08:00

So about a month ago I got a seemingly innocuous email from my friends at Full Tilt. Turns out they started a new program called "Rush Poker" which promised to change poker forever.

If you're not familiar, Rush Poker puts a large group of people (up to 2,000 if I'm not mistaken) and seats them all at the same "table." As soon as you fold your hand the players currently seated with you disappear and the next batch of 9 is immediately seated and dealt a new hand. Let me tell you, it's a rush. Position is relatively random-ish, with blinds being assigned by who's gone the longest without paying a blind. Over the long term it's all evened out.

The biggest difference here, imo, is that you can't count on being seated with the same people, so traditional reads and tendancies are pretty much out the window for now.

For me, the greatest thing about this is the shear volume of hands played in an hour. On one table you'll see over 200 hands per hour. I've been playing three tables simultaneously, and I'm averaging about 700 hands per hour.

The long and the short of it is, however, I'm back in the action. And on top of it all, it's more fun than it's ever been for me.

So here we go again. I've updated my table of goals on the left, but I'll share the details here as well. Note: all of this assumed .50/1.00 limit full ring games.

GOALS:
1) Play about 5 hours per week, or roughly 3500 hands (first three weeks)
2) After I get back into a rhythm I'll add a fourth table and be up to about 5000 hands per week
3) Win at least .5BB/100 poker, or $0.50 won for every hundred hands dealt. Combine this with 27% rakeback and my true goal is...
4) Win $10 per hour

If I keep this up for a year I'll have over $3000 ready to pay for our family trip to DisneyWorld.

Week 1.5

2009-08-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've updated the table on the left to reflect my current goals. The next 2-3 months represent rebuilding my bankroll at $.5/1 and $1/2. The goals represent net profit on the games. Since I'm playing on Stars right now I don't have any rakeback, but I am clearing a bonus. This bonus is not reflected on the table right now. As before, I'm using fairly conservative estimates for win rates, hours per week, and total hands played. Assuming I don't run particularly good or bad these numbers have a good chance of being real.

Here's my week so far (I run good):

Week 1 (remix)

2009-08-09T20:55:00.001-07:00

Week 1 in the books. Great news for me. Glad to be settling back in with a tidy profit. Also sloooowwwwwllllllyyyyy working down a Stars reload bonus.

All of my play so far is 4-tabling .5/1 limit full ring. These games are super, super soft. Of course, all of my missed flop c'bets are stealing pots and my tptk on a three flush board are not getting drawn out on. It's getting late, so I'll keep this brief.

Still holding onto original goals (basically). Pound out as many hands of solid poker as I can. The money will follow me home at the end of the day.

ZOMG!!!1! Has it been this long???

2009-08-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

So after taking a couple months off after the new year I really found no motivation to come back and grind out online once spring, and then summer, showed up. There was just too much fun to have out there. But lately my internal compass has regained it's bearing and I'll be depositing back in and restarting my efforts. I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up pretty much where I left off, that is, .50/1.00 full ring limit hold them poker. Original goals and assumptions are still valid. Once I deposit and start playing I'll give you some more details.

Yay me!

I don't even know what to say right now.

2008-12-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

The doom and gloom have continued for me. The bad beats and cold cards were bad enough, but I just can't get my mind in the right place to play well right now. I'm officially done until after Christmas. I just need a break.

After getting killed at 1/2, then .5/1, both full ring and 6-max, I needed to shift gears. I sat at some 10NL 6-max tables for a few thousand hands and found the same trend. The bankroll has been decimated to about $120, so 10NL is about all I can play with reasonable bankroll management. So far that hasn't stopped my KK from getting all in preflop against AJ and having a JJ4 flop (literally), so we'll see what the new year brings. Happy holidays to all. Safe travels and good tidings and all that.

gogogogogo please please please

2008-12-10T11:56:00.000-08:00

Despite burning through 65% of my bankroll this month I found out I qualified for a $20k freeroll through my rakeback provider. I guess it's worth the $300 if I end up winning $1k or something silly. At the very least I'd like to win back the $300 I lost and chalk this week up to the poker gods just testing my will to live before unleashing me on a massive heater.

But more realistically I fully expect to bust out on the bubble while holding AA vs AK. No doubt the guy who busts me will write in the chat box "lol, tough one" just as I send my new LCD monitors flying through the room like frisbees.

I never thought I'd qualify for these tourneys at such low stakes, but I guess I was pounding out a ton of hands last week. Anyone know how many entrants I can expect to be facing off against here? As far as I know it could be anywhere from 500 to 5,000. Anyway, wish me luck. As far as I know this doesn't intrude on my schedule this weekend, so feel free to sweat me to the final table.

Worst week ever. Seriously, wtf???

2008-12-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

This is about 2/3 full ring and 1/3 6-max.

I'm not normally one to complain about running bad, but seriously, wtf is this crap?

I don't know how many times I've had people crushed only to have it go runner-runner to chop, or how many times my steals were 3-bet, or how many times I can miss draws. Wow.

Alright, I'll stop complaining. For now.

Literally the only thing I've got going for me this week is that I'm on track for Full Tilt's Gold status for the end of year bonus ($75) and with that volume of play I will also get about $75 in rakeback as well. So if I can avoid going totally broke I'll still get at least $150 in bonuses.

I think it's about time for good things to happen to me. I'll try to think of something happy to share with my readers for my next post, even if it's not poker related...

I fought the law and the law won...

2008-12-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

I took my shot at 1/2 over the last couple days. It did not go well. Overall I lost about $125 on the little adventure. So as of this morning I’m sitting at $316 with probably $20 in rakeback on the way. So really I’m up from my initial investment, this is just a significant setback.

That said, I’m going to take a couple steps back to re-evaluate things. I’ve spent over 6,000 hands playing 6-max tables of various levels with pretty awful results overall. That’s really not that many hands, but at the rate I’ve lost money I need to step back down to .50/1.00 and go back to full ring tables. This will do several things for me:

i) full ring allows one to avoid marginal decisions, and wait for easier decisions, thus reducing expected variance

ii) full ring allows one to play against fewer aggressive opponents, on average, thus reducing expected variance

iii) an equally skilled player will generally make less money at full ring, but if it’s the difference between me being a winner at full ring and a loser at 6-max I’ll take the former.

iv) Rakeback will be less. I will play fewer hands per hour AND the rake is divided amongst more players, so I would expect rakeback to be cut roughly in half for a given table’s hour of play.

So what does this all mean for me? Really nothing. Moving up and down and back again is all part of the game. One of the differences between people who can put in the long haul and those that burn out is the capacity to adjust to changes, especially when it comes to bankroll management. One of the hallmark principles of bankroll management is moving down when things go bad, before they get so bad that it’s all gone.

The good news in all of this is that I’ve been meeting (this week exceeding) my goals for hours played. This was always the hardest part for me given my schedule, so at least I have that to stand on. I still believe I’m a winning player at these limits, so all it takes now is letting the long run kick in. To do that, I need to keep plodding on, making the best decisions I can at the tables, and not letting myself drift away during these downturns.

Based on my web traffic data, it appears that I’ve developed a (very) small following of regular visitors. Feel free to make yourself known by commenting. I’d love to respond to what the readers want to hear. So fire off any questions you may have, and let me know your situation. Are you working your way though the micro limits? Are you thinking of learning poker and want to know what it takes? Are you just some random long-lost friend of mine who stumbled upon the blog? Let me know. For the meantime, I’ve got some more hands to play.

Determined to be an Ironman

2008-12-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

With my lack of momentum over Thanksgiving I was feeling a little down about my progress. Today I found out Full Tilt is giving an end of year bonus for Ironman qualifiers. If I get "Silver" for the month I get an extra $50 ($25 for bronze). That seems like incentive enough for me to grind out the month. I'll need to play about 1.5 hours for each of at least 20 days this month for silver.

That $50 will be in addition to my normal rakeback and winnings. So just from rakeback/bonus I should expect at least $150, or roughly $5 per hour. Let's just hope I can win a little on top of that too. To better facilitate this effort I will be playing four tables at a time, three $.50/$1.00 and one $1/$2. This is aggressive and risky, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Also, my wife thinks it's very funny that the "Ironman" requires one to sit in front of their computer clicking a mouse for hours on end.

Falling behind...

2008-11-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

I only played twice this week. First getting ready for the holidays, then the holidays. Only 600 breakeven hands this week. Plan on hitting it hard over the next week to make up for lost time. Also trying to load more monies into account. We'll see how that goes. Once I do I'll be mixing in 1/2 regularly. Currently sitting at $425.

Clarification of bankroll requirements and moving up

2008-11-26T07:18:00.001-08:00

I'm going to refine my definitions of "required bankroll" and outline my rules for taking shots at the next level. For ease in calculation, all my goals are based on rigidly playing a single level until I hit 500 BB's for the next level, then exclusively playing the next level. There are two things wrong with this.

1) It's not practical. Moving between limits should be a more fluid situation. If playing three tables, I should mix in one of the new limit over time, then two, then be playing all three.

2) It's probably too conservative.

In reality, when I am moving up I should have 500 BB's for the next level down to fall back on. So once I hit 500 BB's for .50/1.00, for instance, I am comfortable mixing in some 1/2 games since if it goes really badly, I'll still have $500 to fall back on to play .50/1. Then it will be until I'm over $1k that I would start mixing in 2/4 games. So the $600 - $800 range will essentially be a transition from .5/1 to 1/2 where I'll be playing both limits concurrently, depending on game selection and just how I feel. Once I'm in the $800 - $1200 range I figure I'll be playing pretty much 1/2 exclusively, and at the top end of that start mixing in 2/4 games. All the while adjusting up or down depending on how I'm running, what the bankroll is, and how comfortable I feel about the limits.

So right now with just over $400 in the roll, with plans to deposit more, I'm starting to mix in 1/2 just to see how it goes.

blah week, part 2

2008-11-25T13:27:00.001-08:00

Last week was stomach flu and flat results. This week I don't think I'll play more than a couple hours. Too much going on with Thanksgiving for the next four or five days. Perhaps I can cram some time this weekend. We'll see.

The other half of my goal is to deposit more money into my account, hence the rather large jump on the goals table for this week. This is not a trivial task at the moment given the state of poker legislation (basically a total mess right now depending on who you bank with), so we'll see if I can accomplish that. I'll keep you posted, but don't expect a real glowing report at the end of the week.

Sort of a blah week.

2008-11-23T20:25:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest and greatest. Still just showing cummulative .5/1.00 6-max stats since that's all I'm playing. Next week I'll probably mix in some 1/2 after I load some more money in.

Of note:

A stomach flu shortened my week to a mere 4.73 hours for 1,215 hands. I've also skimmed back from four-tabling since it was getting a little out of hand. I'll have to work my way up from three. But I'm spending a great deal more time exercising better seat selection, so fewer tables may not actually lower my expected return.

On the heels of my "lol downswing" post of roller-coaster downswings/upswings, I added two more even bigger swings this week. Pretty gross really. The net wins for the week are basically flat, but the rakeback is always there, so overall I'm at my highest bankroll since coming back. At the moment it's $416.

I think between depositing more and winning more I'll be playing 1/2 in the next week or so. I'm not hyper-sensitive to moving down if I run bad, so when I hit the $600 range I'll start taking shots and see where it goes from there.

Official goal (graph included)

2008-11-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

1) Start with $300*

2) Play .50/1.00 6-max until I have $1k, move up to 1/2 6-max

3) Play until I have 500 BB's for the next level, move up

4) Repeat step 3 until I can make twice as much at 3/6 as I can at my current job

*I will probably add another few hundred to my roll to speed up my ascent to 1/2

Just for fun, I put together a chart to show me just how much money I can win over the next year or so doing this.

Assumptions:
i) 1.25 BB/100 winrate at .5/1
ii) 1.00 BB/100 winrate at 1/2
iii) 0.75 BB/100 winrate at 2/4
iv) 0.50 BB/100 winrate at 3/6
v) I will play 6 hours per week until I really get into a rhthm, at which point I will play 10 hours per week (I just figured that would be somewhere in the middle of 1/2)
vi) I will assume 3 tables at a time until around the 1/2 range where I will kick it up to 5
vii) 27% rakeback is figured into these projections as well

*I should add that while these are realistic assumptions, I in no way expect a nice smooth line up to $100k. Should my fortunes rise or fall in some fashion to not match my goals, I will simply readjust my starting assumptions and work from there. Essentially this is just a tool for me to see what the world could look like in 12 months. Sort of like buying those skinny pants before you start a diet, just so you have some visual motivation to keep you grinding.

So here it is, click for larger image

lol downswing

2008-11-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

I was glad to show myself that I could shrug off those 65 BB downswings last week. That wasn't so bad. Last night I got an even bigger test. I sat down a four tables, one of which was three-handed against a super-super fish, like 85% VPIP, literally 0% PFR, and an aggression factor of about 0.4 over about 200 hands. He will call down pretty much any two cards to the river and not bet or raise unless he's made a decent hand, say second pair or better. Textbook, cookie-cutter, simple simple opponent.

Well, after losing horrifyingly to him and the others on three other tables for about a half hour I sat out and said to myself "Jeez, I must've dumped like $50 right there." I checked and found out it was actually $80.

So there you have it. -80 BB's in under 200 hands. I didn't feel particularly bad about it, since I knew that I was playing well against bad players, but it still stung a bit to lose 20% of my roll so quickly. That was a landslide. I don't have the chart right now but it will be there in my next weekly stats post.

So I closed those tables and took a break, but I sat right back down with Mr. 80/0 and took back half my losses over the next hour. That felt really good.

One thing's for sure, though. 6-max is way, way more fun than full-ring.

Second update

2008-11-17T15:30:00.000-08:00

Second update from on-tilt posted November 16, 2008:

I think I'll try to keep this to a weekly update. I don't want to brag (if things are good) or whine (if bad), I just want to share my progress. I think it will help keep me motivated if I can share as I go.

Also, I love talking about this stuff, so if you've got any questions or comments let me know.

This week I'm only showing my .5/1.00 6-max stats since that's the only thing I've played for the last two weeks.

Of interest:

i) The MGR column at the end is my "gross rake" that's used to calculate rakeback. I get 27% of MGR paid every week. That means over these 10 hours I've made $30.00 in rakeback, or $3.00 per hour.

ii)Look how swingy my graph is. In just 10 hours I've had two 65 BB downswings and one 45 BB downswing. It would be extremely easy for that to occur sequentially which would mean I could reasonable expect to drop $200 in 10 hours. Fortunately enough I had even bigger upswings to overcome this.

iii)Finally, there is nothing really special about these results, so with $30 for rakeback and $30 for normal winnings over 10 hours, I can reasonably expect $6+ per hour playing .50/1.00.

First update

2008-11-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

This is my first update posted on on-tilt on November 9, 2008:

An update:

Here's my data so far since I decided to make my roaring comeback to online poker. Roughly 18 hours of play since 9/30, but the majority of it was since I originally made this post 10/23.

$46 in poker winnings, plus about $25 in rakeback over this span. So I'm netting just shy of $4 per hour. As you can see my overall win rate of 1.10 BB/100 is competent, but by no means other-worldly (upwards of 3 is seen as truly expert these days).

I'm also on pace to be an [url=http://my.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions/ironman#multi-table]Iron Man Silver Medalist[/url] for November. That doesn't mean much on it's own, but if I can keep it up it'll break down to an extra hundred bucks every few months give or take.

Welcome to the table.

2008-11-17T15:02:00.000-08:00

The following is a post I made on 2+2 on 11/2/08. This really got me going in my plan. Since then I've put in my time and am grinding out my existence. I plan on putting together weekly (at least) updates on my progress and sharing my thoughts about how I'm doing.

From 2+2:
I hesitated to write this all out since it’s LC and wouldn’t mean much to a good portion of you, but I remembered all the times I’d read peoples’ poker lives written out for me to read. Often it was inspirational and I very often learned something from it. So read it or don't, delete it or don't, but I needed to write it out for myself to kick myself in the a$$.

I'm turning 30 in three weeks. I began a serious interest in poker a long, long time ago (mid-90’s) when I saw a WSOP show on ESPN with a friend. Some things Doyle said were very intriguing. Then Rounders came out and I was hooked. The problem was I had no money, at least not enough that I wouldn't mind losing $100 at the local 2/4 game. I decided my best investment into my poker future would be a good book. For some unknown reason the local Barnes and Nobel had a copy of Hold’em Poker by Sklansky. It was the only book on poker there that didn’t promise me that I’d be a big winner, so I bought it. This was around 1998 or 1999. I read the book and very soon after bought Theory of Poker. Right around this time I worked in a public library and was authorized to make new purchases. In no time this small Midwestern library soon had a poker section to rival any within 500 miles (more Sklansky, Malmouth, Lee Jones, Feeney. No Super/System though since it was very hard to find). I was signed up for 2+2 right away. I still remember reading posts by Dynasty, Clarkmeister, Fossilman, Sklansky, and Malmouth. This was on the old yellow forum before they switched software. The funny thing was I still hadn’t played a single hand for real money. I came very close to depositing $100 on Paradise poker back in the day, but I found out that my fiance was pregnant and that sealed the deal for my priorities for the next two years.

When things settled down on the family/career path, I was ready to play. For a number of reasons I didn’t actually deposit money into online poker when first started. Around 2004 I began with two $10 free deposit bonuses on two different sites on the Prima network. I spent about four months grinding out $1.25 SNG’s. I tracked every result in Excel from hand #1. I was determined to turn that free $10 into my retirement fund. After the first month or so I’d turned one account into about $30 and the other to around $20. I got bored and took a shot with the $20 account and busto’d very quickly. After that I was again very meticulous with the $30. Pretty soon I was playing the $2.25 SNG’s (a huge savings in rake) and then ultimately 10NL. At the end of my first Prima run I’d turned the free $10 into $232.

I played the next two years switching games and switching limits, finding my niche. I played SNG’s, NLHE, LHE, PLO, FR, and 6-max. Every few months I’d switch it up and go through the cycle again. The whole time I’d read 2+2 (I’ve always been a better reader than poster, sorry guys) and the latest books (SSHE was huge, along with NLHE:T&P). I also got into a great group of poker friends and we’d play what amounted to the toughest .10/.20 home game around.

Anyway, I’ll get to the more recent developments now. I had taken about nine months off of poker due to various family obligations, most of which my wife started her own business, which meant that I was pretty much on retainer for the better part of a year. That’s hitting a point of equilibrium now, so I can stretch myself again. And as you can tell, I’ve been very conservative and meticulous about record keeping and bankroll management. At least, not playing above my head as to risk total ruin. The only problem with my game that I consistently have is that I spend too much of my bankroll. What it boils down to is that between live play and online, I’ve worked up to and spent about $1k a number of times.

I don’t know if it’s some psychological holding-back that I do to myself, or if the “needs” of the day that end up getting my money are truly worth sacrificing my roll. I know I’ve bought furniture for our house, I’ve paid for many weekend trips to Minneapolis or Chicago (we live near Madison, WI), and I’ve ended up bailing myself out of some other financial pitfall like a broken car or the one time our accountant accidentally double-deducted $1k from our tax bill (that we owed back in a hurry). Basically life kept getting in the way of me making a real run at the tables that I could start building up and working out of micro-limits into small stakes, let alone a sniff at middle or high limits.

I’ve spent countless hours studying the game, poring over 2+2, tables of PT data and win rates and hands per week and how many tables to play and rakeback rates and so on knowing all the while that I’m just on the edge of really making a run at some serious money, but I could never get over the hump.

I’m ready to do what was unthinkable before. I’ve always relied solely on poker to finance my poker. Going back to my first $50 buy-in at a live 2/4 table my live poker bankroll has never been negative. And as I described above, my online roll started for free and has provided thousands.

I’ve prided myself on never taking a risk when it came to gambling. I had to prove to myself (and more importantly my wife) that this is for real, and that I wasn’t risking any “real” money. The only thing I’ve ever spent on poker is what I’ve already won, aside from those first few books.

But now I think I’m ready to actually invest in myself. With a bankroll of zero (the afore-mentioned startup business was the last destination of my roll) I’m going to forgo the step of working $50 into $1k again. I’m going to deposit $1k of my hard earned money over the next month or so and start where I left off at 1/2 and ease into 2/4 and 3/6.. Then it’s just a matter of tuning my mind and body in to putting in the hours, and of course resisting the urge to spend all my money.

Maybe in a year’s time I’ve positioned myself to take the ultimate step of actually “going pro.” I feel like this is the first time I’m actually giving myself a real chance to do that.

I’ve got my first $300 in there now and I’ve been playing the .25/.50 and .50/1 tables while I ease myself back into the swing of things. Despite being tougher than before, there are plenty of soft games at these levels. I haven’t seen any significant differences between the two. There are enough rocks where you can steal a flop or two, and plenty of lags to take to valuetown when the opportunity presents.

So this was long and definitely LC, but I needed to write it down to move myself forward. I owe great thanks to 2+2 and especially the Micros forum. I’ve spent a good amount of time reading many of the strat forums and you guys are truly a class act. It’s a treat to see guys who for all purposes have no business slumming in the micros spending a good deal of time righting people’s wrongs and offering kind encouragement.

Off I go.