Floppy Nuts

The cash games have been going really well.  The losing streak I started out on has completely turned around and I’m ahead 5 buyins now. I’ve also moved up my multi-tabling to 6 tables at a time.

I was nervous starting on 6 tables for the first time, coming up from 4. After about 30 minutes of play though, I realized something had finally clicked. Six seems to be the perfect number for me. It moves fast enough that I don’t get bored waiting for hands and start playing junk, but it’s not so fast that I can’t think or get lost in the action. My last few sessions I’ve been logging about 400+/- hands per hour playing at the “fast” tables on Pokerstars.

I have a solid win rate over 20k hands of about 3BB per 100 hands played. Those stats include my play from the very beginning, where I was adjusting to cash play and figuring out the players, so the first 10k hands actually had a negative balance. In the last 10k hands that average has been going up, to about 8BB/100.  I’m hoping over the next 20k I can maintain something over 5BB/100.

I’ll most likely be moving up in stakes in the next few days. If my win rate holds up and I can play a few hours a night, I’ll be bankrolled for the next level in 2-4 days.

I’m really starting to feel that the more I play, the better I do. Tilt is almost a thing of the past. I find I’m very rarely getting emotionally involved in anything now. I’ve seen so many bad beats in the last few months that I don’t even blink anymore when my aces get beat by deuces. I’m finally able to seperate the money I make from the results of each individual hand and just play my 500 or 1000 hands and collect my profits. That’s a good feeling, that makes the game so much easier to play.

Like I’ve seen many other people say before…I’m sorry I didn’t switch to cash sooner. I was so hooked on the competition of tournaments that I thought I’d never play cash games. Now, I’m wondering how I put up with all the extra rush and calculations and stress of tournament play for so long. I’m sure I’ll still play in an occasional tournament for fun or special events, but cash is where it’s at.

May the fish be with you…

Well…Not quite. I’m still about half of a buy-in down, but almost back to even and in the black. If I’d played another couple hundred hands last night I’d probably be on the positive side already, but my net connection wasn’t being very friendly, and as much as I like risking money on cards, I don’t like gambling against my cable company, I know I’ll lose.

The cash games are definitely more my speed, and I can’t wait until I can start moving up in stakes. I’m going to try to put in some more hours at night, hopefully catching a bigger crowd online and squeezing a little more money out of poker each day.

I thought I had more to say, but that seems to be about it. Over the next few days I’ll most likely post a few articles on different things I’ve been thinking about lately. The play by play type posts must be getting boring.

May the fish be with you…

I’m still down overall since I started the cash games, but only 3 buyins at this point. I was down as much as 5, and have been bouncing between 3 and 4 for a few days. My play is still shakey in some places, but I’m also having a run of bad cards that seems unbelievable sometimes.

I’m currently playing 5NL, or No-Limit hold’em with a big blind of $.05. I buy in for $5 at each table, and play 4 to 6 tables at the same time. In my first 7500 hands of cash play, I got dealt AA 27 times. In those 27 hands with pocket aces, I managed to LOSE a total of 24 cents. That’s right, negative balance on Aces. In the same set of hands, I WON over $20 with KK, being dealt that hand 33 times. It’s unbelievable how many times I’ve had aces beat by trips and straights in this stretch of hands. When that part of the equation finally comes back around to the positive side, it’ll give me back my 3 buy-ins plus a little more.

I’ve played enough that I’ve got over 500 hands of stats on some regular players, and 50-100 hands on many players that I’ve seen on more than one occasion. I’m starting to build up notes on quite a few players and it’s starting to pay off.

I’m not playing as much as I’d really like to, or as much as I think I should, but I am feeling like I’m playing well when I do play. I really wasn’t very big on taking notes when I was playing the Sit N Go tournaments. I didn’t see quite so many of the same players over and over. I’m finding that in the cash games, notes are invaluable. The very first time I referred to a note I had written earlier, I adjusted my strategy and ended up stacking my villain within a few hands. That was a great feeling.

Hopefully I’ll have some more postive things to write on the next update.

May the fish be with you…

I’ve been a little slow at my play, and updating here. After my last update, I went on vacation for a week. When I returned I had a day or two to recover and then got hit by some family problems that have really slowed everything down.

So far the cash games seem to be what I was looking for. I started off losing as I got used to the play, but the trend has turned around and I am doing much better than I thought I would, and without so much of the stress I was feeling with the tournament play.

I’m really enjoying being able to play when I want, for as long as I want, with no restrictions on when I can sit down at, move between, or leave tables.  I’ve been playing 3-4 tables at a time, and will probably try to get that up to 6, where I think I’ll stop trying to get in any more.

I’ll try to post more details and some numbers on my next update which hopefully won’t be another 2 weeks off.

May the fish be with you…

This past week didn’t go so well.  The variance of the SNG games just gets to me on some primal level that makes me insane.

I worked all week just to finish up with less money in my bankroll than I started with. Not because I was playing bad, but because there’s just too much random crap that can happen in the middle of an SNG that will end the game without you getting paid.  I only came out a few dollars down, but what bugs me is just the sheer amount of time and brain work that went into losing those few dollars.

I’ve gone over things in my head a hundred times, and I keep coming up the same. I wasn’t tilted, I wasn’t making bad calls, or bad pushes, I was just getting crushed by apparently every idiot on the site that would call any kind of raise with any two cards. I had pocket aces beat by some idiot who called my pre-flop all-in reraise with 4 6 offsuit and freakin sucked out on me with two-pair. That’s pretty much how my entire week went. 6 times in a row I pushed all-in pre-flop with pocket kings only to have the player on my immediate left turn over aces. 6 times in a row! I suppose I’ll be ready for stuff like that in the future, but I’d never seen anything like it. It was brutal.

Another part of Sit N Go games that I really don’t like is the lack of any real table selection, and the complete disrespect of many amateur regular SNG players for other regular players in the SNG games. I think just about any idiot can figure out that if he plays against fish, he makes more money than if he plays against other serious players. But somehow, time after time, If I set up 4 or 6 games at a time, I’ll have 2 or 3 regular players join every single game. Then, of course, we clear the fish off the table, and we sit there like a bunch of morons for an extra half hour because everyone is too tight, basically in push/fold mode, and the payout turns into a crapshoot. I think the direct competition of the tournament games gets the egos all fired up, and more people, especially at the lower stakes, are more interested in trying to “school the fish” than trying to actually win money. It’s just pathetic how many people there are in the $5 games and below who think they’re freakin world champion caliber players. (I’ll be writing another post about that eventually. That’s been on my mind for a while now.)

But anyway, after the week I had, I hit a very low low point on Friday. I came to 2 conclusions basically. The first was that I can not yet rely on this for income. I need to practice and play more, and do things in a more natural way. I’m trying to force too many things at one time. The second conclusion was that Sit N Go games have the power to piss me off to no end. I get far too emotionally involved in the competition of the tournament and it’s not healthy for me. I am capable of extreme rage at the drop of a hat, and on a day where I’m not feeling particularly uppity, a few bad beats in a few SNG games can really get me fuming. I think what really gets to me the most is that if some donk does something stupid and happens to suck out on me, I get screwed with no chance for revenge. I get knocked out of the game, he continues playing, and I have to go find another game to play. I can’t remain at the table, knowing what I know about him, and get the chance to take my money (plus more) back from him. That drives me nuts. And that brings me to where I’m going with all this…

Cash Games.

I’m going to try my hand at cash games. I think the skills I’ve learned from the SNG’s such as positional play, hand reading, and other things, will work well to my advantage against the fish in cash games who really have no clue what they’re doing, especially with the added bonus of being able to select exactly who I want to sit with at a table.  I’ve talked to a few regular players who say they’ve switched to cash games for mainly the same reasons that I started thinking about moving to cash. So I think that’s where I’m gonna go.

I’m actually sitting at two .02/.05 tables on PokerStars as I’m writing this. So far things are going pretty good. I’m about even over a few hundred hands, but the level of play is super soft compared to what I’m used to in the SNG games.  I really love it that I don’t have to think about who’s stack is what size, how many people are left, how close I am to the money, my tournament equity and all that extra math that comes with an SNG game. All I have to think about is the cards in front of me, and the opponents in the pot. There’s no ICM or equity calcualations.  And most importantly, I can get out of the game whenever I feel like it. I don’t have to wait for the tournament to end before I can leave.

I guess that’s about it for today. Hopefully I’ll have some good things ro report after a few days of cash play.

May the fish be with you…

Today (Friday) was definitely a good day. Nothing crazy, no new tricks, just straight ahead grinding through games (4 at a time) to make the most I could. I finished the day 10 buy-ins ahead, with an ITM rate of 57.89% and an ROI of 54%. A great day for me.

Since my attempt at the turbos, and return to the regulars a few days ago, I’ve got a 45% ITM rate and 25.86% ROI. I’m 3 buy-ins short of the 50 I want before I shoot for the next buy-in level. That’ll probably happen on Monday or Tuesday. If I can get even close to my current ITM and ROI on the next level, I’ll be in great shape to start turning some real profits. Moving up in buy-ins will also give me a lot more bonus FPP and VPP points with Poker Stars.  That’ll let me cash in on extra bonuses and tournament entries.

My plan is just to stick to what I’m doing and try to move up naturally, without trying to force anything. Within the next month I want to be playing at least 6 tables full-time, hopefully 8 or 10. I want to be solidly entrenched in either the next buy-in level or the one above it.

May the fish be with you…

Apparently I am too stupid to know when to just quit and listen to my own advice and learn from my own mistakes. I make plans for myself, specifically to keep myself from getting off track and doing stupid things, and then I proceed to ignore those plans, and do more stupid things than I could have ever planned for anyway.

After the horrible experience of my first botched attempt at playing more than 4 tables at a time, to make myself feel better, and to make the loss more complete and satisfying, I decided that I should also make a run at the turbo SNG tournaments. In turbo tournaments, the level of the blinds and minimum bets rise every 5 minutes. In a normal single table tournament they rise every 10 minutes. The end result is that the turbo SNG games will finish in about half the time of a “regular” SNG game. If I can play twice as fast, I can make twice as much! Right? Sure! What could possibly go wrong?

I tried a few sets of turbo games over the weekend. They seemed to go well. The first few I lost, but after playing 4 or 5 I felt I was getting used to it. With what I played over the weekend, and something like 30 games on Monday, I was matching my ROI and ITM averages with regular games perfectly. I was happy.

On Tuesday, I was excited to get going on my first full day at the turbos, excited to get in there and make a killing. Tuesday kicked my ass. I don’t even want to load up my stats to look up the exact numbers, it makes me so angry I can’t take it. I lost something like 14 buy-ins. Every all-in confrontation that I ran into seemed to be worse than the previous. I don’t want to whine. And I’m not trying to sound like I want sympathy. I just want people to have an idea of the day I had. I had pocket Aces beat by 1 card straights 4 times in a row. I had an Ace high flush, beat by a Queen high straight flush. I flopped a full-house, only to have it beat by a better full house on or before the river,  3 times. I normally don’t see quads even one time per day. I was beaten by 4 of a kind 3 times. It was just a brutal day. I’m sure I probably made my share of mistakes that added to a bad run of luck, but it was just too much.

I decided that for today (Wednesday) I was finally going to listen to my own advice and learn from my mistakes. I went back to the regular games, with a new attitude, and a new drive. I finished the day with a 50% ITM (in-the-money) rate, and a 52%(!!) ROI.  It’s a small sample, of course, but it was a real good feeling to have a day like that after such a big screw-up.

I’ve decided I’m going to stick with my strengths, and my plans, and stick with the regular 9-man SNG tournaments. No more turbos. I will continue to try to play more tables at a time, but I will do so slower. I will only add 2 tables at a time, and no more, until I’m feeling completely comfortable. Right now I’m playing 4 tables at the same time, in a tiled layout, so I can see what’s going on at all 4 tables at all times. I think I’ll eventually move to the stacked layout for playing, and try to get to 10-12 tables simultaneously. I’ll also be looking to move up levels in buy-ins as I reach 50 buy-ins for the coming level.

I’ve still got some work to do to make up for my losses over the last few days, but I am 100% confident that I will do even better now. After trying the turbo games for a couple of days, the regular games seem incredibly easy. I feel like I have infinite amounts of time to think and plan. I was already over my 50 buy-ins for the next level when I started with this whole adventure gone wrong. I’ll most likely be back up to that point sometime tomorrow. From there I’ll have to decide if I want to try the next level on Friday or save it for Monday.

Trying on Friday could be good if I do well, I’ll be happy as hell all weekend. But if I lose, I’m going to be pissed off all weekend and waiting for Monday so I can try to make it up. But then again, if I wait until Monday, I have this superstition that Monday is always going to go bad in one way or another. Maybe I should just forget it all and try on Tuesday.

I’m getting very close to being able to withdraw real amounts of money and contribute to my family income through Poker. Got my fingers crossed…Stick with the plan, no more deviations, dominate.

May the fish be with you…

This past week was going extremely well until Friday. Somewhere in the course of the day on Thursday I decided it would be a good idea to try some new things on Friday in an attempt to improve on the volume of SNG tournaments I can play in one day. That didn’t go so well.

An initial experiment with 8 tables in a stacked layout seemed to work out ok. I then decided to see if I could do an even 10. I’m still not exactly sure what happened, but something with my stats tracking software flipped out and I basically lost control of all the windows on my desktop for a few minutes. Tournament timers started going off, I started getting folded out, and I couldn’t get any window to stay on the screen long enough to let me do anything. When I finally closed my tracking software, things calmed down, but I was now in a really nervous state, with 10 games going at the same time, without my HUD, and still trying to flip through all the windows to make sure I had clicked “I’m back” on all the tables that had timed out on me during the fiasco.

The end result was that I decimated the 20% ROI I had been making for the last 2 weeks. I dropped down 7.5 buy-ins in an hour. Normally, on my losing days, I might lose 2 or 3 in a day. To lose 7.5 in an hour really hurt.

I seem to get a little over-confident sometimes and do something stupid when I’ve been winning for a fair amount of time. Some sort of self sabotage I guess. I’m gonna bookmark this one as a big reminder of why I need to stick with my original plans that I came up with after careful thought, and not allow myself to do stupid things because I’m having a few good days or weeks.

I have no doubt I’ll eventually be able to play more tables at the same time. But for now, I just need to keep practicing and allow myself to get faster without trying to push it so much.

Hopefully next week things will start moving up again. A new week, a new month, and hopefully a big new addition to my bankroll.

May the fish be with you…

It’s Saturday again, and this past week went pretty good. I think I’m getting better with each attempt at the multi-table tournaments. Nothing big to speak of for yesterday, but I made it to the money in a few, but not my greatest results.

The week overall was good statistically, for SNG games I finished the week with a 45.65% in-the-money rate,  and a 19.12% ROI. Both are a little higher than what I had been estimating in my head, so I’m happy with that. Next for those is higher buy-ins, more tables at the same time, and hopefully more profit.

May the fish be with you…

The last 2 days I played mostly large-field multi-table tournaments. I think I played 6 or 7 hours yesterday and just finished about 9 or 10 for today. I cashed in all the tournaments that I could actually play.

I woke up an hour early this morning and decided to take advantage of that and play an extra tournament. I made it through the first hour of the first tournament and had just started a second one when my cable connection suddenly went out. When I finally got back online, my stacks in both tournaments were so small from blinds that I had no choice but to go into push or fold mode. It only took a few hands to bust out of both with nothing.

In my final tournament yesterday, I managed to finish 26th out of 1779. A good finish I think, but also extremely frustrating since my previous best is 25th. Even if I’d just gotten 24th I’d at least feel like I could tell myself I have a new best.

In the same tournament today, I got taken out at 113 of 1675.  Very frustrated again. But I feel my game is really getting better with each try, and a final table and a win can’t be too far off.

I didn’t play as many SNG games as I usually do because I was really concentrating on the MTTs. I am, so far, maintaining a 44% in-the-money rate and 16.9% ROI on those. My two biggest goals right now are the MTT win, and getting good enough to handle more tables simultaneously for the SNGs.

May the fish be with you…