Floppy Nuts

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…

After a few months of playing, and reading a few strategy books (and blogs and forums), I’ve noticed that I seem to have my least profitable stretches right after I learn something new about poker strategies. I’ve seen other people on forums say they suffer from the same problem. I’m going to call it “Book Tilt”.

Book tilt happens when you find what you think is a good bit of advice, and then, maybe subconsciously, you want to take advantage of this advice so badly that it screws up your game completely.

For example, maybe you read somewhere that during an SNG tournament, when the blinds get up over $100, it’s a good idea to start trying to raise more pre-flop and steal the blinds. You load up a few games, and every time the blinds hit $100, you start raising like a madman hoping to steal, and end up donking off your entire stack in a few minutes and losing several buy-ins in record time. You’ve stopped thinking. You’ve stopped playing YOUR game. You’re trying to play someone else’s game, and you’ve got a bad case of book tilt.

I find that after I learn something new I have to consciously remind myself to just go into my next game as if it were any other game and play the way I would always play. Advice from a book or a forum is only good in certain situations, and that’s the key. You have to let those situations come to you, you can’t make them happen. I think that’s a big part of poker itself, waiting for things to happen, not trying to make them happen. The cards determine the situation, not the player.

You have to let new ideas become a part of your game,  not let them take over your game. There will be a time to use your super sneaky new trick, but it won’t be every time you load up a game. Sometimes it won’t work because of the cards. Sometimes it won’t work because of the level of your opponent(s). That’s where the skill comes in…figuring out when it will work, and more importantly, when it won’t work.

It’s also very important to determine where the advice you like is coming from. Tips meant for a cash game don’t work very well in an SNG game. Tips for playing against experienced, high-stakes, players don’t work very well against low-stakes newbies who aren’t thinking on the same level.

You should always be thinking about the particular situation you are in, and the players involved. Many poker players will say that the two worst words to describe anything in poker are “always” and “never”.

You should never always do anything…

But the only thing you should always do, is never make a move without thinking.

May the fish be with you…

My Friday didn’t start off too well, as I overslept. “5 more minutes” turned into several hours and I missed a few of the morning tournaments I like to play. I am a US citizen, but I am living in South America, and currently 3 hours ahead of US Eastern time. So If I get up to play at 8 or 9 in the morning, I tend to catch lots of American opponents who are either drunk or tired from being up all night, or both. The only thing better than a fish is a drunk tired fish.

I only played in 2 large tournaments and ended up coming out a loser on those, but only for a few dollars.

The rest of the afternoon I spent playing Sit N Go games, and that started off absolutely horrible. In the first few games I managed to get knocked out just before getting paid by some of the most unbelievable bits of bad luck I’ve had in weeks. I surprised myself with how well I handled it. A couple of weeks ago I would have blown my top over the bad beats I was getting for what seemed like 100 games in a row. In one game, as I was knocked out in 4th place yet again, one of my opponents actually said “That was just brutal.” It always makes me feel a little bit better when I see that I’m not the only one who thinks the poker gods just bent me over and kicked my ass.

The day turned around though, and my losing streak turned back to a winning streak. With several 1st and 2nd place finishes, I ended the day 7 buy-ins ahead, with 62% in-the-money and a 78% ROI for the day. That put me in a pretty good mood for the rest of the night.

I sort of accidentally discovered that I’m doing much better with playing multiple tables at one time. I remember a few weeks ago, loading up 4 random tables and just watching, thinking how it looked so confusing and that I’d never be able to actually play 4 games all at once. Normally I don’t chat at all during the games, except for an occasional “thanks” when someone says something nice. But yesterday, right in the middle of my winning streak, I found myself playing 4 tables at the same time, and actually carrying on a conversation with one of my opponents about Iron Maiden. I felt pretty good about that. Not that it was a smart idea to be chatting about Iron Maiden with 4 games going, but it showed me how comfortable I’m getting with multiple games. Hopefully I’ll be able to move up to 6 at a time soon.

I guess that’s about it for today. It’s Saturday now, and I’m going to try to do something other than sit here and look at cards. It’s like 100 degrees outside (Summer in the Southern hemisphere when it’s winter in the North) so I don’t know what that something is going to be yet, but hopefully I’ll find some way to stay both entertained and cool.

May the fish be with you…

I probably should have made about 20 entries here by now. So let me just catch this up to today.

My basic plan at the moment is to grind in SNG tournaments and use the profit from those to finance entries into the larger multi-table tournaments, cashing out the winnings from the MTT’s and any extra from the SNG’s when I can. Hopefully getting to a point where I can make one to three thousand dollars per month within two or three months from now.

I’ve been playing the micro-stakes for a few months off and on, becoming more serious, and dedicating 6-10 hours per day to poker over the last month or two. I play at least 5 days a week, and occasionally play 2-4 hours on Saturday or Sunday. I started with the $1 tournaments and worked my bankroll up to enough to play the $3 tournaments. So far I’ve managed to multiply my starting bankroll by 10 times, achieving a 40% in-the-money rate at the $3 games. I’ve gone from a single table at a time, to now playing 4 simultaneously and still increasing my ROI (return on investment). In the last week or so I’ve made some very good improvements on getting more 1st or 2nd finishes, rather than 3rd, and that is really improving the bottom line. I owe some thanks to Collin Moshman for that. I’ll have a review of his book up shortly.

My day basically consists of anywhere from 4 to 8 large field tournaments, and anywhere from 10 to 20 SNG tournaments. As I increase the number of tables I can play at one time, the number of SNG’s will grow. My aim is really to get in 100 SNG games per day, and then just play as many multi-table tournaments as are available throughout the day.

It may not sound like much up to this point, but even at micro stakes, the numbers are pretty amazing. I’ve played literally thousands of dollars worth of tournaments, and never had to deposit any money online after my initial $20. (I actually started by depositing $50, but lost $30 of it very quickly fumbling through different types of tournaments and cash games as I figured out how everything worked. When I decided to actually start tracking my play and account for everything, I had $20 remaining to start with.) My net profit is only a few hundred bucks right now, after rake and all that, but in reality, I’ve managed to play well over $2000 worth of games with $20. Not too shabby I think.

I’ve made a few stabs at the $5 games, but seem to always hit a wall at a certain point and my bankroll has gone up and down hovering around the same point a few times. I’ve basically broken even on those over 300 games. As well as I’ve been doing on the $3 games lately, I’ll probably be making another run at the $5 games next week. I don’t think I’m going to be quite so stuck this time. I’m fairly sure that the next jump I make up to the $5’s is going to be permanent, and hopefully the $10’s won’t be too far after that. My plan is to maintain 50 buy-ins for whatever level I’m currently playing and use any extra profit for the mutli-table tournaments.

I’m playing in MTT’s from $1 to $3 buy-ins. I’ve made quite a few finishes in the top 100, my best so far being 25th place. I’m absolutely dying for that first win.

I busted out of 2 tournies today with no cash, and then finished 155th out of over 4100 entries in the final one I played today. That at least gave me back my MTT buy-ins for the day and a small profit on top. I did extremely well on the SNG’s, ending the day with over a 150% ROI and something like 60% in-the-money for the day. I freaking love days like that. Nothing makes me feel better than looking myself up on Sharkscope and seeing “Super Hot” next to my name. (I just hope I can still do that when I’m playing for $50+.

I guess that’s about it for today. I’ve got other stuff on my mind, but it really should go into a separate entry. I’ll have to see if I still feel like writing after I walk the dog and finish my wine.

May the fish be with you…

Elements Of Poker
Tommy Angelo

This is a poker strategy book of a different kind. You won’t find much advice on how to play any particular hand, or strategies to crush the TAGs, the LAGs and everyone in between. I think the best way to sum it up is with a line from the first few pages of the book. A quote included from one of Tommy’s first students, “This was not at all what I expected, but it was exactly what I needed.”

The book consists of Tommy’s 144 elements of poker. Some are simple, one sentence, ideas while others take up several pages in the 250 page book. All of them though, will inspire new ways of thinking about the way you play, and how it effects you, your game, your opponents, and your environment. The author explains everything with a bit of humor and a unique outlook. He covers everything from common ideas like positional play, bankroll and tilt, to more abstract ideas such as getting “gobsmacked”, finger tilt and poker funk.

For anyone who’s putting in more than a few hours a week playing poker, the advice and ideas will undoubtedly improve the way you play your game. If you’re doing well, but you feel like there’s some block somewhere in your mind slowing you down, or holding you back, this should be the next book on your list. I guarantee you that at least one of Tommy’s elements of poker will show you a way around that block.

You can also check out Tommy’s site for excerpts from his book and lots of worthwhile articles on different aspects of poker at TommyAngelo.com.

I keep telling myself I’m going to write something today. Then tomorrow comes, and I didn’t write anything yesterday.

I’m going to try to keep up with posting something every day or two, regarding what I’m currently doing and how it’s going. The Daily Grind.

To start, I’ll just talk about a few things that I think any new player will need to be ready for, and need to overcome if they’re going to try to grind it out every day and make some real money from playing poker.

First, they call it grinding for a reason. It’s hard. Even if you love the game, it’s hard. Even a winning player is going to lose most of the games he plays. If you play cash games, this might not be so evident since one game really just runs into another and you have winning or losing “sessions”. But if you’re like me and you play tournament type games like Sit N Go tournaments or full fledged MTT’s, the games have clearly defined winners and losers, and you will lose many more games than you win. I’ve seen numbers in several places that seem to say even the best SNG players can only hope to sustain between a 40% and 45% “in the money” rate. That means that in 55% to 60% of the games played, you will lose, and get paid nothing for your time. You WILL lose more often than you win.

Losing so much can really make you feel like a loser. Even if you’re really winning (in the long run). If you have a bad day at your regular job, you just had a bad day,but you still get paid, then you go home, and things can get better. When you have a bad day at your poker job, not only is it a bad day, but you don’t get paid either. Not only do you not get paid, you actually have LESS money than you had when you started the day. It’s like your boss reached into your pocket and took back part of your last paycheck because you screwed up this morning. It gets to you on an emotional level. It’s hard to be prepared for it. it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t gone through it. But rest assured, if you try to do it every day, for any real amount of time, you will eventually find yourself sitting somewhere, so angry/sad/disappointed that you’re almost in tears, wondering how you could have ever thought THIS would be a good idea.

It’s been a few months, and I’ve had a few really bad moments, and lots of angry sort-of-bad moments. I still haven’t really found anything that helps other than getting used to it with time, the calming words of my wife when I need them, and the shared anger of others on forums and/or blogs.

I think that’s the best advice I can give. When you eventually hit one of those really bad spots, you’re going to feel so utterly alone and so much like a loser, it’s crushing you. Now go find someone else to share it with. Allow yourself to realize that you’re not alone with that feeling. It’s hard, and it sucks, but other people visit that place too, and just not being alone makes it not so bad.

The Education Of A Poker Player
Herbert O. Yardley

This book was a great inspiration. The book is broken down into a few stories from Herbert’s own life, and he uses each as an example to outline his methods and strategies for various forms of poker. The book was first published in 1957, and Herbert himself was born in 1889. There are just as many amazing anecdotes in the book as there are amazing strategies for games like 5 and 7 card stud.

Starting out in the very beginning of the 20th century, he tells of a local saloon owner named Monty who became his first poker coach. From an amazing account of a man who actually suffered a heart attack and died at the table, holding 4 aces in his hand and having died just moments before he won what would have been the biggest pot in his life, to helping capture a german spy in the early days just before the US got involved in WWI by analyzing the money he’d won from the man in a large poker pot at a club in China.

The book is only 120 pages, so it’s a quick read, but really is entertaining, and interesting as a glimpse back to life at the beginning of the last century. Many of the strategies in the book can be translated and will help with the modern games of Hold ‘Em and Omaha, but these games didn’t exist at the time of the writing. If you’re big on 5 or 7 card stud though, you’ll find great tips and charts that will instantly improve anyone’s game.

It’s filled with descriptions for about 25 variations of poker (And tips for all of them). If you play home games with your buddies and like to fool around with different types of games, you’ll find plenty of ideas here.