With a title like that, I think I've given you the opportunity to complete skip this blog entry because as a summary, it pretty much covers it all.
The last few days grind have been a struggle to say the least. Thanks to an impromptu visit back home and also coming down with a nasty cold, I've had a lot more time to invest into playing MTTs, something which I was clearly failing at now that I'd returned to university. What I've been working on specifically the last few days, is to work out a specific nightly schedule to which I can stick to barring any specific Pokerstars promotions or of course, if it's Sunday. What I've been searching for specifically is value. Unfortunately, it's a little harder to find than simply to open up the lobby and pick the tournaments with the biggest prize pools, it's a far more subtle art. After all, if I hadn't put in the effort to find the value almost 2 years ago, I never would have found the beautiful game we all love so much, O8. The rebuys specifically I find to be great value, in particular the $3r PLO and the $5 2R1A. Because of the somewhat small initial buyin, the fish seem attracted to these games but squander their initial stacks almost instantly and invariably rebuy. In the PLO, I've seen terrible players donate almost 10 full buyins to the prize pool before getting lucky and running up a stack, clearly for me to obtain later. However, even with these goldmines, I still seem to be losing.
Now, I don't want to turn this post into a rant about how bad I run, but dude, I run so bad! It's not so much the crazy one outers and sick suck outs, but more losing the important flips at crucial times interspersed between set ups and coolers. In the past few days, I've managed to build up quite large stacks in the big field NLHE MTTs only to make the final 50 orso for little more than a min cash. Unfortunately, it's become quite the bad habit. It's not all doom and gloom though, I have felt my game continually improving since I made the transition to playing MTTs full time and the more I play, identify regs and understand how the fish think, the more deep runs I'll make. What I think I've particularly improved upon is the chip accumulation phase of the tournaments, which allows me to have more attempts at the big money, from which some day I can feel I'll hit it big. For now though, I'm still experiencing steady small losses, but that's MTT variance for you. All the pros warn you about it but when you get off to such a good start, like I did at the beginning of the stake, you always feel like your invincible and can only keep winning. This is not the case.
Well there's a quick update on how things are going. I'm sorry everything's a bit vague but with a bit of luck, we'll have some big scores and deep runs to get into specifics over in the near future. Wishing everybody luck at the tables and remember to follow me on Twitter (@Grimiscool) if you enjoy my random ramblings. Bye!
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Thursday, 22 September 2011
WCOOP-51: $320 PL Omaha H/L
As a PLO8 MTT player, the most exciting tournament of the year has to be the WCOOP. It's by far the biggest event of the calender in terms of prize pool and in terms of value. Although it attracts all the hardcore MTT grinders looking for their shot at a bracelet and POY points, very rarely do the young NLHE pro's understand the theory and strategy behind our beloved game. Perfect for players like me as, more often than not, these players are simply donating $320 to the prize pool by employing a strategy of go big or go home early. Combine this with the great number of satellite qualifiers and we have ourselves a very juicy tournament.
So I sold a nice chunk of my action so I was guaranteed a place in the tournament, i.e. I did not have to rely on satelliting in, got a good few hours kip so I was fresh and had picked up a cool 6 pack of lucozade in preparation for a long night in, as not only was I playing the main event starting at 7, but also the 2nd chance event beginning two hours later. I even managed to get my girlfriend, who's flat and internet connection I was borrowing, excited about it. She became a very handy tea lady.
The first hour was highly uneventful. I increased my stack to t5162 by the first break by simply playing tight, solid poker. I called with promising hands in position and my post-flop aggression was dictated by whether I had connected with it or not. No need for crazy bluffs while 250BBs deep.
The second hour I dipped down in chips by not hitting flops but managed to win a medium sized pot as the break was coming up to end with t5810.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213897
The BB was definitely the table fish. He had played a lot of hands out of position while being rather passive post-flop. I make what I think is a standard open on the button and decide to call the 3bet with position and deep stacks. It's a somewhat loose call but I think considering the opponent, it's a correct one. I believe he cbets a large portion of his range on this board and with a relatively decent low draw and the 2nd nut FD, I think it's a standard call. When he donks the turn, I think that a raise will receive a fold but now I've picked up additional outs to a strong made hand and decide to call and raise the river no matter what falls because I know he'll be donking again. I make my 2 way hand on the river and decide to make the raise larger because I think it looks more like a bluff that way. In hindsight I don't believe the villain is capable of that kind of thinking so maybe a small value raise was the way to go.
The 2nd chance then began and after some early chipping up from discernibly weak players, I received a huge double up from a bigstack.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213921
I think the hand plays itself to be honest. I raise the flop to fold out players behind me and take the pot heads up. When he 3bets, I'm more than happy to get it in as I'm usually a large favourite and I'm still in good shape against a nightmare hand of A2xxhh.
In the main I couldn't really remember playing a pot for the entire hour, and after consulting HEM, it seems I didn't. I'd blinded down to t4756 but was truly card dead.
Unfortunately, in terms of writing a blog, everything got a bit boring from hear on in. In the main I lost quite a few chips simply by not winning small pots making somewhat incorrect call downs, and in the second chance I doubled up a tight short stack with top 2 pair against what I believed was clear Aces, which ended up being KKxx which had top set.
My bust out hand of the main was pretty boring too. Unfortunately the HH file has corrupted so I can't post it but all you need to know is that after getting very short (3BBs) I shoved the BTN with AJJ3s and the BB made the (correct) call with any 4 cards (9332s) which rivered the flush. Not how I wanted my first WCOOP of the year to end, but sometimes it's just not your day.
The 2nd chance bust out hand was more interesting though.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213923
The villain was a reg I'd played with a lot before and although he's quite strong (he eventually final tabled the event) I know I can outplay him post-flop. When he leads for just over half pot on the flop, I know he can do this with both made hands and strong draws. What swung me towards putting him on a made hand was his early position raise. From our history I know he could be leading with top set, top two and even Aces with a LD in order to induce a raise. Against this range, I believe I had decent equity with my low wrap, FD, and LD. Not only this, but I think my stack size gives me decent fold equity against other hands which have me beat currently. Unfortunately, on this occasion he had the draw, not only that, but every draw to the nuts and had me drawing incredibly slim, around 21%. It was the nightmare hand to be up against and maybe if I had to play the hand again I'd take another line but at the time I believed I was making the correct move.
So there's my first WCOOP journey of the year. I'll be back on Sunday to report on the $215 NLO8 and it's 2nd chance, and with a bit of luck, we'll have a happier story to tell.
See ya!
So I sold a nice chunk of my action so I was guaranteed a place in the tournament, i.e. I did not have to rely on satelliting in, got a good few hours kip so I was fresh and had picked up a cool 6 pack of lucozade in preparation for a long night in, as not only was I playing the main event starting at 7, but also the 2nd chance event beginning two hours later. I even managed to get my girlfriend, who's flat and internet connection I was borrowing, excited about it. She became a very handy tea lady.
The first hour was highly uneventful. I increased my stack to t5162 by the first break by simply playing tight, solid poker. I called with promising hands in position and my post-flop aggression was dictated by whether I had connected with it or not. No need for crazy bluffs while 250BBs deep.
The second hour I dipped down in chips by not hitting flops but managed to win a medium sized pot as the break was coming up to end with t5810.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213897
The BB was definitely the table fish. He had played a lot of hands out of position while being rather passive post-flop. I make what I think is a standard open on the button and decide to call the 3bet with position and deep stacks. It's a somewhat loose call but I think considering the opponent, it's a correct one. I believe he cbets a large portion of his range on this board and with a relatively decent low draw and the 2nd nut FD, I think it's a standard call. When he donks the turn, I think that a raise will receive a fold but now I've picked up additional outs to a strong made hand and decide to call and raise the river no matter what falls because I know he'll be donking again. I make my 2 way hand on the river and decide to make the raise larger because I think it looks more like a bluff that way. In hindsight I don't believe the villain is capable of that kind of thinking so maybe a small value raise was the way to go.
The 2nd chance then began and after some early chipping up from discernibly weak players, I received a huge double up from a bigstack.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213921
I think the hand plays itself to be honest. I raise the flop to fold out players behind me and take the pot heads up. When he 3bets, I'm more than happy to get it in as I'm usually a large favourite and I'm still in good shape against a nightmare hand of A2xxhh.
In the main I couldn't really remember playing a pot for the entire hour, and after consulting HEM, it seems I didn't. I'd blinded down to t4756 but was truly card dead.
Unfortunately, in terms of writing a blog, everything got a bit boring from hear on in. In the main I lost quite a few chips simply by not winning small pots making somewhat incorrect call downs, and in the second chance I doubled up a tight short stack with top 2 pair against what I believed was clear Aces, which ended up being KKxx which had top set.
My bust out hand of the main was pretty boring too. Unfortunately the HH file has corrupted so I can't post it but all you need to know is that after getting very short (3BBs) I shoved the BTN with AJJ3s and the BB made the (correct) call with any 4 cards (9332s) which rivered the flush. Not how I wanted my first WCOOP of the year to end, but sometimes it's just not your day.
The 2nd chance bust out hand was more interesting though.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6213923
The villain was a reg I'd played with a lot before and although he's quite strong (he eventually final tabled the event) I know I can outplay him post-flop. When he leads for just over half pot on the flop, I know he can do this with both made hands and strong draws. What swung me towards putting him on a made hand was his early position raise. From our history I know he could be leading with top set, top two and even Aces with a LD in order to induce a raise. Against this range, I believe I had decent equity with my low wrap, FD, and LD. Not only this, but I think my stack size gives me decent fold equity against other hands which have me beat currently. Unfortunately, on this occasion he had the draw, not only that, but every draw to the nuts and had me drawing incredibly slim, around 21%. It was the nightmare hand to be up against and maybe if I had to play the hand again I'd take another line but at the time I believed I was making the correct move.
So there's my first WCOOP journey of the year. I'll be back on Sunday to report on the $215 NLO8 and it's 2nd chance, and with a bit of luck, we'll have a happier story to tell.
See ya!
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Oops, I'm a terrible Blogger =(
Wow, it's almost been a whole month since my last entry. Now I know I'm not the best when it comes to regularly posting but I didn't think I'd ever let it get to the stage where entire months go past between updates. So faithful readers, here's my promise to you. I will never again let a whole month go past without at least swinging by and letting y'all know what's up.
So let me fill you in on the month's happenings. Almost exactly one month ago, I left for a family holiday in North Carolina in the States. I could ramble on about what I did or who I saw, but this is a poker blog, and in this poker blog, we talk about poker! Besides, no one cares......
Soon after I returned, I realise that due to constant withdrawals from my Stars account in order to pay for my summer, I had decimated my bankroll, and was no longer able to continue with the stakes that I am comfortable with. I had mentioned this to a friend of mine, who is also a previous staker, who very generously offered to back me for whatever low stakes MTTs and Sngs I wished to play, whether it be PLO8, NLHE etc. I snapped up the opportunity, and proceeded to cash out everything I had in my Stars account, which allowed me to live out the rest of the summer somewhat comfortably.
Almost straight away I proved my friends faith in me by final tabling my old friend, the $16 2x Chance turbo PLO8, taking a beat in 4th for around $400. The same day, I made it heads up in one of the two daily $33 PLO8s for another $450. The $850 combined cashes meant that the stake was off to a great start, but it didn't end there. The very next day I added the $5 2R1A NLHE into my schedule now that I was able to afford it and went on an insanely deep run, eventually losing a coinflip to bust in 4th for a shade over $2k, my biggest cash to date. I felt that I was playing good and running good too and although I wasn't able to take it down despite having the chip lead for much of the final table, I'm still very happy with the result. Hopefully in time my NLHE MTT game will continue to improve and more deep runs will follow.
That's pretty much been it for the month. Apologies for the vague update but the life of this PLO8 grinder isn't exactly the most exciting lol. With a bit of luck we can go on some more deep runs this month and have some more exciting blog posts to read. I have also a (very) short trip report from the £40 PLO8 at the Fox Club to come. But for now, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all at the tables soon!
So let me fill you in on the month's happenings. Almost exactly one month ago, I left for a family holiday in North Carolina in the States. I could ramble on about what I did or who I saw, but this is a poker blog, and in this poker blog, we talk about poker! Besides, no one cares......
Soon after I returned, I realise that due to constant withdrawals from my Stars account in order to pay for my summer, I had decimated my bankroll, and was no longer able to continue with the stakes that I am comfortable with. I had mentioned this to a friend of mine, who is also a previous staker, who very generously offered to back me for whatever low stakes MTTs and Sngs I wished to play, whether it be PLO8, NLHE etc. I snapped up the opportunity, and proceeded to cash out everything I had in my Stars account, which allowed me to live out the rest of the summer somewhat comfortably.
Almost straight away I proved my friends faith in me by final tabling my old friend, the $16 2x Chance turbo PLO8, taking a beat in 4th for around $400. The same day, I made it heads up in one of the two daily $33 PLO8s for another $450. The $850 combined cashes meant that the stake was off to a great start, but it didn't end there. The very next day I added the $5 2R1A NLHE into my schedule now that I was able to afford it and went on an insanely deep run, eventually losing a coinflip to bust in 4th for a shade over $2k, my biggest cash to date. I felt that I was playing good and running good too and although I wasn't able to take it down despite having the chip lead for much of the final table, I'm still very happy with the result. Hopefully in time my NLHE MTT game will continue to improve and more deep runs will follow.
That's pretty much been it for the month. Apologies for the vague update but the life of this PLO8 grinder isn't exactly the most exciting lol. With a bit of luck we can go on some more deep runs this month and have some more exciting blog posts to read. I have also a (very) short trip report from the £40 PLO8 at the Fox Club to come. But for now, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all at the tables soon!
Monday, 1 August 2011
My Thoughts on the British Poker Awards
So before I begin waffling about the British Poker Awards, many of you may want to visit the website first to understand what on earth I'm talking about!
Best International Player:
After Erik Seidel's (Yes, that's the correct spelling) start to this year, I can't really see how anyone else can take down this category. Despite the majority of his cashes coming from super high roller events and invitationals, $4.5 million is still an immense sum to accumulate in the first 3 months of the year and personally I believe the fact that these were some of the most elite fields ever seen makes this accomplishment even more impressive.
Best Cash Player:
This category was hard to decide upon because I know very little about the cash game scene and to be honest, this is due to the fact that they aren't very well covered by the media, making the fact that these are "Reader's Choice Awards" quite redundant. Despite this I'm giving my vote to Sam Trickett purely based on a stories I read on the 2+2 forum about his adventures in Macau. If I recall correctly, he was also one of the few players who had begun to learn Chinese in an attempt to become friendlier with the businessmen which I think is an incredibly clever move if you're there purely to take their money.
Best Mixed Game Player:
This category irritated me somewhat. I don't mean to offend Matt Perrins because I really do think he's a great player but I don't feel he deserved a nomination for taking down the 2-7 bracelet, an event which by his own admission he doesn't really play. I may be completely wrong here and Matt is actual quite an active mixed game player, in which case I apologise, but I think he's taking up a space in the nominations which could be given to a better candidate, for example, Jon Spinks aka EMSBas. I've played various mixed game MTTs with this player and no matter what the format, he always seems to dominate. In fact he took down the UKCOOP PLO8 event I played a few months back. The winner of this category though must be Chufty, aka Richard Ashby. He's just crushed the Stud events for a while now as well as PLO online and he's not a bad NLHE player either. He should walk away with this award.
Best PLO Player:
Despite Ben Grundy's sick PLO graph, he hasn't really done enough this year in my opinion to take down this award. Therefore I'd vote for JP Kelly. I've railed quite a few of his 25/50 games on Pokerstars recently and he's been really impressive. He hasn't really tussled with Isildur1 much but he has been taking Theo Jorgensen to the cleaners recently, not an easy task.
Best Tournament Player:
How can Jake Cody not win this award. He takes down the 25k HU at the WSOP to complete his triple crown. He took down a SCOOP-H bracelet earlier this year and he's been crushing the side events from what I've heard. I don't think I can really elaborate much on this category because Cody's record speaks for itself but he's definately got my vote.
Best Social Media User:
First of all, please spell Keith right, it's not that difficult a name. Secondly, his twitter is more tilting than interesting, so strangely enough I'm not going to vote for him. I do enjoy Vicky Coren's tweets and the odd one of her Observer columns, even though the majority go over my head, but I'd give my vote to Daleroxxu. I'd love to say it's because I read his blog religiously or subscribe to his twitter feed or even know much about him. It's purely down to the fact he secretly filmed a Thai hooker soliciting. Pure video gold. If you haven't seen the video yet head over to Dale blog and I'm sure he hasn't made it too difficult to find.
Best Blogger:
Even though I told Tikay I voted for him (teehee) I actually voted for Snoopy's blog over at BlackBelt Poker. Although I don't read as many blogs as I should do, considering I enjoy blogging myself, I do read his quite often and his mix of articles, interviews and just general dry wit, make it quite enjoyable to to glaze over in between grind sessions. Another reason why Snoopy got my vote in this category may be because I actually haven't heard of the others :)
Best Online Player:
Now this category is just plain ridiculous. How many amazing online talents have been omitted from this group of nominations. Take EMSBas who's been near the top of the TLB for the past 3-4 years, or Toby "810ofclubs" Lewis who took down the Sunday $162 and the Sunday 500 on the same night! Besides that he had back to back FTs of the 1k Tuesday. Maybe Rob "Vaga Lion" Akery who's had a good few years grinding the Ultra High stakes games on both PS and FTP. The list could easily run into 3 figures. Eventually I voted for Chris Moorman who, by far and away, deserves to be nominated in this category and also the plaudits that come with what I believe will be his eventually victory.
Best Poker League:
Nuts Poker League. Only one I've played.
Best Poker Forum:
2+2. Only one I'm a member of.
Best Contribution to Poker:
For me, John Duthie has to win this category. The EPT has revolutionized live tournament poker as well televised tournament poker. It gets bigger and better every year and Duthie is still involved with every aspect of the tour. I'd go as far to say that many pros these days owe their careers to Duthie's inception through not only providing a tournament series to play, but by attracting the casual players from which the pros make their money. To be honest, if they could award this prize twice, Duthie would get my vote again.
Poker Personality of the Year:
Finally, I'm not too sure about this category. If I'm quite honest, I don't think any one person has shone personality-wise this year so even if I were asked to suggest any further nominations, I wouldn't be able to. From the options given, however, I'm giving my vote to Liv Boeree. Thanks to her Pokerstars sponsorship, she's gained a ton of television exposure, and through that has been able to show what an interesting personality she actually is. Besides, she's a hot physicist, I'd vote her for Prime Minister given the option.
So there you go. No one probably cares about my votes, but it gave me something to do while I one table my final tournament on Sunday, a pretty expensive Sunday so far. Good luck at the table y'all!
Best International Player:
After Erik Seidel's (Yes, that's the correct spelling) start to this year, I can't really see how anyone else can take down this category. Despite the majority of his cashes coming from super high roller events and invitationals, $4.5 million is still an immense sum to accumulate in the first 3 months of the year and personally I believe the fact that these were some of the most elite fields ever seen makes this accomplishment even more impressive.
Best Cash Player:
This category was hard to decide upon because I know very little about the cash game scene and to be honest, this is due to the fact that they aren't very well covered by the media, making the fact that these are "Reader's Choice Awards" quite redundant. Despite this I'm giving my vote to Sam Trickett purely based on a stories I read on the 2+2 forum about his adventures in Macau. If I recall correctly, he was also one of the few players who had begun to learn Chinese in an attempt to become friendlier with the businessmen which I think is an incredibly clever move if you're there purely to take their money.
Best Mixed Game Player:
This category irritated me somewhat. I don't mean to offend Matt Perrins because I really do think he's a great player but I don't feel he deserved a nomination for taking down the 2-7 bracelet, an event which by his own admission he doesn't really play. I may be completely wrong here and Matt is actual quite an active mixed game player, in which case I apologise, but I think he's taking up a space in the nominations which could be given to a better candidate, for example, Jon Spinks aka EMSBas. I've played various mixed game MTTs with this player and no matter what the format, he always seems to dominate. In fact he took down the UKCOOP PLO8 event I played a few months back. The winner of this category though must be Chufty, aka Richard Ashby. He's just crushed the Stud events for a while now as well as PLO online and he's not a bad NLHE player either. He should walk away with this award.
Best PLO Player:
Despite Ben Grundy's sick PLO graph, he hasn't really done enough this year in my opinion to take down this award. Therefore I'd vote for JP Kelly. I've railed quite a few of his 25/50 games on Pokerstars recently and he's been really impressive. He hasn't really tussled with Isildur1 much but he has been taking Theo Jorgensen to the cleaners recently, not an easy task.
Best Tournament Player:
How can Jake Cody not win this award. He takes down the 25k HU at the WSOP to complete his triple crown. He took down a SCOOP-H bracelet earlier this year and he's been crushing the side events from what I've heard. I don't think I can really elaborate much on this category because Cody's record speaks for itself but he's definately got my vote.
Best Social Media User:
First of all, please spell Keith right, it's not that difficult a name. Secondly, his twitter is more tilting than interesting, so strangely enough I'm not going to vote for him. I do enjoy Vicky Coren's tweets and the odd one of her Observer columns, even though the majority go over my head, but I'd give my vote to Daleroxxu. I'd love to say it's because I read his blog religiously or subscribe to his twitter feed or even know much about him. It's purely down to the fact he secretly filmed a Thai hooker soliciting. Pure video gold. If you haven't seen the video yet head over to Dale blog and I'm sure he hasn't made it too difficult to find.
Best Blogger:
Even though I told Tikay I voted for him (teehee) I actually voted for Snoopy's blog over at BlackBelt Poker. Although I don't read as many blogs as I should do, considering I enjoy blogging myself, I do read his quite often and his mix of articles, interviews and just general dry wit, make it quite enjoyable to to glaze over in between grind sessions. Another reason why Snoopy got my vote in this category may be because I actually haven't heard of the others :)
Best Online Player:
Now this category is just plain ridiculous. How many amazing online talents have been omitted from this group of nominations. Take EMSBas who's been near the top of the TLB for the past 3-4 years, or Toby "810ofclubs" Lewis who took down the Sunday $162 and the Sunday 500 on the same night! Besides that he had back to back FTs of the 1k Tuesday. Maybe Rob "Vaga Lion" Akery who's had a good few years grinding the Ultra High stakes games on both PS and FTP. The list could easily run into 3 figures. Eventually I voted for Chris Moorman who, by far and away, deserves to be nominated in this category and also the plaudits that come with what I believe will be his eventually victory.
Best Poker League:
Nuts Poker League. Only one I've played.
Best Poker Forum:
2+2. Only one I'm a member of.
Best Contribution to Poker:
For me, John Duthie has to win this category. The EPT has revolutionized live tournament poker as well televised tournament poker. It gets bigger and better every year and Duthie is still involved with every aspect of the tour. I'd go as far to say that many pros these days owe their careers to Duthie's inception through not only providing a tournament series to play, but by attracting the casual players from which the pros make their money. To be honest, if they could award this prize twice, Duthie would get my vote again.
Poker Personality of the Year:
Finally, I'm not too sure about this category. If I'm quite honest, I don't think any one person has shone personality-wise this year so even if I were asked to suggest any further nominations, I wouldn't be able to. From the options given, however, I'm giving my vote to Liv Boeree. Thanks to her Pokerstars sponsorship, she's gained a ton of television exposure, and through that has been able to show what an interesting personality she actually is. Besides, she's a hot physicist, I'd vote her for Prime Minister given the option.
So there you go. No one probably cares about my votes, but it gave me something to do while I one table my final tournament on Sunday, a pretty expensive Sunday so far. Good luck at the table y'all!
Friday, 29 July 2011
My Much Overdue Trip Report
I've been meaning to write this for a while now, and even though I'd like to blame it on a hectic schedule, the reason for not putting this up has solely been due to my laziness. Even as I type I can feel that my standard of English has dropped because of my lack of writing and generally only speaking broken English with my family and talking about random crap with my friends. Nevertheless let's begin.
Last week a fellow O8 reg invited me up to Reigate to play the Omaha event at the Surrey Poker Masters festival held at The Full House. As my faithful followers know, I'm a bit of a Holdem noob so I'll jump at any excuse to play a live non-Holdem event. The tournament was a £75 Double Chance with an 8k starting stack, 8k add on or rebuy, and a 2k extra, which was taken by pretty much everyone. Players also had the option of a second life should they blast through all 18k in the first hour, which I think 3 players managed.
So I began with my usual "Tight is Right" approach and barely played a hand in the first level. I used this opportunity to scope out my table which seemed pretty good, a nice mixture of competent players and people new to the game. The best news, no one player seemed to be an Omaha aficionado. The first big hand the table saw, the seat to my right committed all 10k of his starting stack with the nut flush on a paired board. His opponent hesitated to call the river shove but eventually pushed the chips over the line with the underfull. As you can imagine, I was licking my lips to get into the action but after being card dead for the first two and a half levels the table broke. Damn.
The new table was a completely different kettle of fish, just from the table talk alone it was obvious that many of the players knew what they were doing. The big talker to my right, although limping every hand, was playing the Farha role very well and had already amassed a rather large chip stack. Two other large stacks were moved to our table within the first level I was there and fairly quickly, chips were being moved around like pieces of a chess board. But enough for the background, let's get into some of my hands. I bumped my stack back over starting when it was limped around to me in the big blind with K444 and after flopping "quads", my check/raise was enough to take down a decent sized pot along with a chuckle after flipping over my hand. I then got into my first big pot when it was raised up in middle position by one of the bigger stacks and after 2 calls, I called the button with QTJ9 with 3 spades. I flopped gin, 789 with 2 spades. The original raiser led out, the 2 hitchikers folded and I pumped it up with my nut straight and redraw to the flush. My opponent insta shipped and I snap called. He turned over 2 pair with the nut flush draw and after a blank turn and river, I was now up to a decent stack, just over average for the room. Around two hands later I called an early position raise with AQTTds and we took a flop of 964 with 2 spades heads up. I check/call his flop continuation bet and also his turn bet after the 6 of spades drops. The river comes another 4, double pairing the board and my opponent bets again, this time fairly large. He seemed fairly competent so far, and his large river bet was a considerable percentage of his stack, and mine as well, but I decided to get stubborn with my nut flush. I couldn't see how his early position open could contain some strange 99xx or 64xx combination so came to the conclusion that he must be making some ill-timed bluff and made the call. To my surprise he flipped over a 6 for trips and while I stacked my newly acquired ships I contemplated whether he was betting the river for value or to get me to lay down a flush. I'm still not sure. Nevertheless, this push me up to a pretty large stack which I managed to ride for the next two hours orso until the final table.
I came into the final table around the middle of the pack but quickly lost a medium sized pot after getting a bit over zealous with some terrible disjointed hand, so bad I can't even recall it. But this is where the trip report gets interesting! The pot was opened from UTG and the player to my right shoved for around 7BBs. I looked down to find AA77 with no suits but I was more than happy to reshove with it. The original raiser then went into the tank while making a long drawn out speech about how sick the hand was, about how he couldn't lay down his "favourite" hand even know he knew behind and made sure that everyone in the room knew what a sick spot this was going to be. It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out what he was going to flip over but that didn't stop him making the call with his Kings. To be fair to him, I think they were double suited and fairly connected. I held in the massive 3 way pot when I turned an Ace to make top set with my opponents drawing dead, and to rub salt in the wounds of my opponent, the river was a king. I then knocked the same player out in 7th when once again I beat his Kings. We were then down to six with five players making the money but with my now large stack, bordering on the chiplead, I tried to abuse the bubble, but this didn't go so well. A few hands later I got into a 140k pot on the flop with top two and a gutshot against the same top two with a flush draw that got there and once again, I dropped down to a shortish stack.
I considered folding my way to a min-cash, after all it was a fairly large buyin for me, but when I looked down to find KK67ds on the button after the loose cutoff's open, I could resist a reshove. Unfortunately for me he'd been given aces, and I was drawing fairly slim. I gained a little hope after flopping a flush draw, then when I turned an open ender, I thought this may be my day. Then, BINK, 5 on the river giving me my straight along with a few gasps from the rail. The 7th place finisher I knocked out then started bitching with my opponent about how good I was running, which I wasn't disputing mind you. This reputation wasn't exactly lost when I finally knocked out the same player the next hand with QQ55ds against Aces, once against hitting that miracle 5 on the river. Even though I'd won these 2 successive pots, I still only had an average chipstack but at least I'd made the money, as well as a few enemies I'm sure.
My exit wasn't too exciting, I got into a large pot with the English Mr Farha with myself holding top pair and an open ender on the turn on which we'd committed the majority of our stacks. When the 3rd club hit the river I knew he'd hit it but with only 20k behind and around 150k in the middle, I couldn't really make the fold. Turned out that I had him covered by few 1k chips which he promptly mopped up on the very next hand. Mr Farha eventually won the tournament which was deserved because from what I'd seen, he'd played the LAGtard role very well and managed to get important folds and calls in the right spots.
I was pretty happy with 5th and the £180 cash but considering I ran so good on the final table, I was hoping to take it a bit further. I guess I must've played so bad that running good just wasn't enough lol. This is usually the part where I say, "Most importantly, I had a great time". Forget that, most importantly, I got my first Hendon Mob entry! Woo! Jokes aside, I had a great time, the club was great place to relax and play some cards and the tournament was run smoothly and efficiently. I'll definitely be back again to play the next festival. Thanks to Fran and his mates for giving me a place to stay and donating £40 to me in a 5p/10p DC game that night, and thanks to The Full House for hosting the tournament.
More trip reports to come this weekend as I make another trip to a London card room, which to be decided, and possibly a report of a deepish run I made online on Wednesday. Peace y'all!
Last week a fellow O8 reg invited me up to Reigate to play the Omaha event at the Surrey Poker Masters festival held at The Full House. As my faithful followers know, I'm a bit of a Holdem noob so I'll jump at any excuse to play a live non-Holdem event. The tournament was a £75 Double Chance with an 8k starting stack, 8k add on or rebuy, and a 2k extra, which was taken by pretty much everyone. Players also had the option of a second life should they blast through all 18k in the first hour, which I think 3 players managed.
So I began with my usual "Tight is Right" approach and barely played a hand in the first level. I used this opportunity to scope out my table which seemed pretty good, a nice mixture of competent players and people new to the game. The best news, no one player seemed to be an Omaha aficionado. The first big hand the table saw, the seat to my right committed all 10k of his starting stack with the nut flush on a paired board. His opponent hesitated to call the river shove but eventually pushed the chips over the line with the underfull. As you can imagine, I was licking my lips to get into the action but after being card dead for the first two and a half levels the table broke. Damn.
The new table was a completely different kettle of fish, just from the table talk alone it was obvious that many of the players knew what they were doing. The big talker to my right, although limping every hand, was playing the Farha role very well and had already amassed a rather large chip stack. Two other large stacks were moved to our table within the first level I was there and fairly quickly, chips were being moved around like pieces of a chess board. But enough for the background, let's get into some of my hands. I bumped my stack back over starting when it was limped around to me in the big blind with K444 and after flopping "quads", my check/raise was enough to take down a decent sized pot along with a chuckle after flipping over my hand. I then got into my first big pot when it was raised up in middle position by one of the bigger stacks and after 2 calls, I called the button with QTJ9 with 3 spades. I flopped gin, 789 with 2 spades. The original raiser led out, the 2 hitchikers folded and I pumped it up with my nut straight and redraw to the flush. My opponent insta shipped and I snap called. He turned over 2 pair with the nut flush draw and after a blank turn and river, I was now up to a decent stack, just over average for the room. Around two hands later I called an early position raise with AQTTds and we took a flop of 964 with 2 spades heads up. I check/call his flop continuation bet and also his turn bet after the 6 of spades drops. The river comes another 4, double pairing the board and my opponent bets again, this time fairly large. He seemed fairly competent so far, and his large river bet was a considerable percentage of his stack, and mine as well, but I decided to get stubborn with my nut flush. I couldn't see how his early position open could contain some strange 99xx or 64xx combination so came to the conclusion that he must be making some ill-timed bluff and made the call. To my surprise he flipped over a 6 for trips and while I stacked my newly acquired ships I contemplated whether he was betting the river for value or to get me to lay down a flush. I'm still not sure. Nevertheless, this push me up to a pretty large stack which I managed to ride for the next two hours orso until the final table.
I came into the final table around the middle of the pack but quickly lost a medium sized pot after getting a bit over zealous with some terrible disjointed hand, so bad I can't even recall it. But this is where the trip report gets interesting! The pot was opened from UTG and the player to my right shoved for around 7BBs. I looked down to find AA77 with no suits but I was more than happy to reshove with it. The original raiser then went into the tank while making a long drawn out speech about how sick the hand was, about how he couldn't lay down his "favourite" hand even know he knew behind and made sure that everyone in the room knew what a sick spot this was going to be. It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out what he was going to flip over but that didn't stop him making the call with his Kings. To be fair to him, I think they were double suited and fairly connected. I held in the massive 3 way pot when I turned an Ace to make top set with my opponents drawing dead, and to rub salt in the wounds of my opponent, the river was a king. I then knocked the same player out in 7th when once again I beat his Kings. We were then down to six with five players making the money but with my now large stack, bordering on the chiplead, I tried to abuse the bubble, but this didn't go so well. A few hands later I got into a 140k pot on the flop with top two and a gutshot against the same top two with a flush draw that got there and once again, I dropped down to a shortish stack.
I considered folding my way to a min-cash, after all it was a fairly large buyin for me, but when I looked down to find KK67ds on the button after the loose cutoff's open, I could resist a reshove. Unfortunately for me he'd been given aces, and I was drawing fairly slim. I gained a little hope after flopping a flush draw, then when I turned an open ender, I thought this may be my day. Then, BINK, 5 on the river giving me my straight along with a few gasps from the rail. The 7th place finisher I knocked out then started bitching with my opponent about how good I was running, which I wasn't disputing mind you. This reputation wasn't exactly lost when I finally knocked out the same player the next hand with QQ55ds against Aces, once against hitting that miracle 5 on the river. Even though I'd won these 2 successive pots, I still only had an average chipstack but at least I'd made the money, as well as a few enemies I'm sure.
My exit wasn't too exciting, I got into a large pot with the English Mr Farha with myself holding top pair and an open ender on the turn on which we'd committed the majority of our stacks. When the 3rd club hit the river I knew he'd hit it but with only 20k behind and around 150k in the middle, I couldn't really make the fold. Turned out that I had him covered by few 1k chips which he promptly mopped up on the very next hand. Mr Farha eventually won the tournament which was deserved because from what I'd seen, he'd played the LAGtard role very well and managed to get important folds and calls in the right spots.
I was pretty happy with 5th and the £180 cash but considering I ran so good on the final table, I was hoping to take it a bit further. I guess I must've played so bad that running good just wasn't enough lol. This is usually the part where I say, "Most importantly, I had a great time". Forget that, most importantly, I got my first Hendon Mob entry! Woo! Jokes aside, I had a great time, the club was great place to relax and play some cards and the tournament was run smoothly and efficiently. I'll definitely be back again to play the next festival. Thanks to Fran and his mates for giving me a place to stay and donating £40 to me in a 5p/10p DC game that night, and thanks to The Full House for hosting the tournament.
More trip reports to come this weekend as I make another trip to a London card room, which to be decided, and possibly a report of a deepish run I made online on Wednesday. Peace y'all!
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Empire Trip Report
So on Wednesday I took a little trip to the Empire Casino in London with a buddy of mine to play the afternoon £20+5+3 KO Bounty tournament. We’d started with the intention of playing the almost identical tournament over at the Fox Poker Club but my obviously forward-thinking friend forgot to bring any form of identification and without a membership at the Fox, made playing there very difficult. Luckily for us, he does have a membership at the Empire, and luckier still, their KO tournament began half an hour after the Fox’s. The lad was clearly running good even before we had taken a seat.
The tournament was a small field with a fast structure. With only 25 entrants, 15 minute levels and a 2500 chip starting stack, the game played more like a 27 man turbo SnG on Pokerstars, perfect for myself. Our table lined up as followed:
Ø Seat 1: Friendly Injured Man
Ø Seat 2: Elderly First Timer
Ø Seat 3: Talky Talkerson
Ø Seat 4: Myself
Ø Seat 5: Bad Spaniard
Ø Seat 6: My Buddy
Ø Seat 7: Good Spaniard
Ø Seat 8: American
Ø Seat 9: Nitty Indian
Ø Seat 10: Quiet Man
The game started almost immediately. Good Spaniard cheekily check called all the way to the river on a TT7JQ board with 77 and got paid with his check raise on the river by Quiet Man with trips. The very next hand, Quiet put in his final 250 chips and got called in 5 spots, including myself with very speculative JTs. The flop came down KKx with 2 clubs. Elderly First Timer bet out, I folded, and was called by Good Spaniard and Friendly Injured man. The turn brought the Ac. Elderly First timer bet, Good Spaniard shoved, Friendly folded, and Elderly called with AJ no clubs. Spaniard turned over a 6 high flush which was good for both main and side. Friendly admitted to the table he folded trips. Quiet Man was duly replaced by Dealer? (Yes, that’s what I’m calling him). The game was self dealt and Dealer? automatically offered to deal the whole game, and with no hesitation, everyone accepted. Elderly was replaced by Arab Woman. I had whittled my stack down to around 1750 after some bad calling and an equally bad turn bet with 2 pair against Good Spaniards obvious straight, before I woke up with JJ in MP. With the blinds 50/100, Friendly opened to 300 UTG, I re-shoved and was called by Friendly’s AK. I won the resulting flip and was back up to a decent stack.
Because of Dealer? our table seemed to receive around twice the number of hands than the second table, a point we made across to Dealer? He’d made a few comments about other clubs so we assumed he’d learnt the trade from one of the other poker venues dotted around London. However, when I asked him where he dealt I was met with the response, “Oh no, I don’t deal, I just picked it up from playing a lot! It’s hardly difficult is it?” After witnessing this man pass around cards faster than some online sites, there was a noticeably stunned silence after his revelation.
Back to the poker, American and Nitty Indian had moved to the other table for balance, Good Spaniard had amassed a fairly large stack, closing in on 10k, Friendly had been replaced by South American after busting his short stack following our flip and my friend had built up his stack nicely by shoving over Arab Lady and South American’s constant limps. I had kept my stack buoyant by re-shoving twice over an open, firstly with AQ and then KQs. Then, my bust out hand.
With the blinds at 150/300, my stack was hovering around 4000. From early position, I raised to 700 with QQ. My buddy re-shoved which was folded round to me at which point I snap called and straight away the look on his face gave it away that I was ahead. I flipped over my Queens jubilantly and jumped for joy after my friend tabled his pocket Eights. Now, seeming as I’ve already mentioned that this was my bust out hand, you should know that I did not win this pot. Talky Talkerson had already warned me that I shouldn’t have celebrated too early when the dreaded 8s was laid down on the river. Life is cruel isn’t it. Now I’d like to say that I took my bad beat with quiet dignity and calmly sat down at another table to rail my friend with a now decent chip stack, but we all know that there’s nothing worse than being knocked out of a tournament by a good friend and no one at the table minded when I berated my friend incessantly with the “insult”, “YOU RUN LIKE F*CKING GOD!!”.
I stuck around a while to watch Bad Spaniard, Talky Talkerson and Arab Woman just made truly horrible cEV folds when getting crazy immediate and also to rail my friend, who although making the correct shoves strategically, ran into hands on 3 occasions, the final blow coming after shoving KTs from the CO and losing the resulting flip against the 99 tabled by the SB. Yes, this man can hit his miracle 2 outer on the river, but can’t win a simple 50/50, crazy world. On returning to the poker room to retrieve a forgotten jumper, we saw Good Spaniard chopping up the tournament against a player from the other table, a sight I did not mind considering I would label the lad one of maybe 5 half decent players in the field.
All in all, a frustrating trip, but one I intend on repeating, given the softness of the field and the affordable buyin. This will be the first in a line of trip reports as in the coming days I’m due to make a trip to the local casino in Portsmouth to grind the 1/1 NLHE cash game there and next week I’m making a trip to Reigate to play the £75 PLO Double Chance event in their summer festival. Hope to see a few of you there.
I'm Back Everybody!
Hi everybody. Apologies for the lack of recent blog posting but as many of you might know, I’ve been on holiday in Turkey for the past week and a bit. Had a great time, mainly drunk off my ass, but have come back relaxed, refocused and ready to grind.
Before I left, I was in the midst of a terrible downswing, so if I’m honest, a long break did me well. I never had the dejected mindset that I was sitting down to lose, but it had come to a stage where even a small win was enough to put a large grin on my face. Emotionally, it’s not a terrible place to be, after all, no expectations, no disappointments, but if I’m to take poker more seriously this summer, I can’t be hanging on to those $15-$20 wins. It just won’t pay the bills. So what am I going to do now you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Exactly the same as I was doing before.
Poker, as we know, entails a large amount of variance and PLO8 is no exception, contrary to the beliefs of certain 2+2ers. I still believed I was playing a decent game and after posting a few hands in the forums, as well as debating the hand’s of others, my belief was reaffirmed. Not to say that I am playing a perfect un-exploitable game, I still have more leaks than a collinder, but I was playing the type of game that should be profitable at that level. What I would like to do, however, is to game select better. Because so few PLO8 tables run, at any stakes, it was near enough impossible to game select properly, it still is, but if I am to focus mainly on my MTT game, then it becomes easier to only play 2-3 highly profitable tables. Sure, this will hurt my Supernova pursuit, but if my plan pays off, then I will have a sufficiently large bankroll to absorb the swings should I return to mass-multitabling the low stakes.
So although this wasn’t the most exciting blog post ever, it’s been a good exercise for me to flex my writing muscles, and in the future, more captivating entries will follow. Good luck at the table everybody.
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
PLO8 MTTs - ABC
We have an old saying in the Lagtard group, ABC - Always Be Closing. For those who don't have a clue what we're on about, you'll want to watch this :
So what does this mean for us poker players, when you get deep in a tournament, seal the deal and ship that bad boy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to follow my own advice recently.
Now, I love PLO8 MTTs. The skill level of the average player in these is just terrible at best, literally some of the plays you see in these things just boggles the mind. Even the regs who actually do have a clue about how to play the game, just don't understand how to change their game to deal with the MTT format. I don't mean to sound cocky or anything, but provided I don't receive some sort of bad beat early on in the tournament, I believe I can go deep in pretty much any daily tournament. However, that's as far as it goes, because when I get to the final, and most important stages, I can't seem to close it out. In the past week, I've made around 10 final tables, granted not so difficult considering the average field size is around 100, but not even one victory. So far 3rd seems to be my favourite number because my last 4 finishes have all been in this position. Thankfully all these deep runs have kept me afloat financially, however, unless I up my game and take those top spots, it's never going to increase my bankroll to the levels I would like.
So yeah, this has been a bit of a frustrated rant post, but hopefully I can turn this around and make some strides. I'd like to play a few more daily $109s by selling off packages and also I would like to play a few more mixed game tournaments but unfortunately there aren't that many daily tournaments, only a few decent sized HORSE MTTs and the odd Stud8 without a guarantee.
On a side note, good luck to all the Brits over in Vegas and with the upcoming PLO8 events, I hope some 2+2ers and some readers of this blog can make some deep runs, and then come back and put me in some events ;) Take it easy everybody.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Reconsidering the NLHE angle.
So those of you who regularly follow this blog, or those who possess the ability to simply scroll down the page to my last post, will know that I began my summer grind with the intention of learning NLHE cash not only as a way of looking for the dead money but also as a way of breaking up the monotony of grinding O8 constantly. But the more I think about it, the more it just doesn't seem appealing to me.
Over the past few days I spent a fair amount of time grinding NL50 but almost twice as much time discussing NL cash play with a few players who I consider knowledgeable about the game, but for all I know could be complete donks ;) Just kidding guys, thank you for all your help. And although I feel that my game has picked up exponentially even after just a few days, I'm not feeling that spark of excitement, and I can't see myself having the motivation for those long sessions that I do playing O8. So for now I think it's an end to my NLHE cash career.
However, I haven't quite given up on NLHE all together. As all my faithful fans know, I also grind 180s, or I did before I retired for the exam period. I still enjoy playing 180s and in general MTTs, but I know I'm well behind the average player as far as competency in concerned. If only I had a long sustained period of time where I didn't have much to do and could devote a lot of hours towards studying the game. Oh wait, I do :) When I started playing again, the first thing I did was buy a Deucescracked subscription. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision, I had taken the 7 day free trial a few months ago but decided it wasn't good value to purchase the subscription when I was about to take 2 months off. So far I've been using the subscription to watch O8 videos and the odd NLHE cash video that was suggested by friends, (while I'm on it, everyone should watch the Bart Hanson video where he breaks down his own play on Live at the Bike, it's free to watch), but starting tonight I'm going to watch some MTT videos. I know I'm not going to turn into a pro overnight but I'd like to at least hold my own when I inevitably play the odd NLHE MTT.
So let's get a small update going about how O8 has gone recently. I made back to back final tables in my favourite tournament, the $16t 2xChance, but only managed a 3rd and a 5th for around 900$ combined which is still a nice payday, but I would have liked to close another one. I've badgered Stars constantly to add more turbo PLO8 MTTs to the schedule but for now I'm happy to play this one no matter what, it's just the most profitable tournament online in my opinion, maybe eclipsed only by the Sunday Storm. Cash had been going well until today where I ran $500 below EV and dropped quite a chunk but I felt I played well and recognized the spots where I played badly, so I'm taking it on the chin and will be back to the grind shortly.
So I guess that'll be it for now. Thanks everyone for reading the blog, and I'd definitely recommend reading some of the other O8 based blogs listed somewhere on my page. Also, if you're not already there, join the O8 regs Skype group. Good luck at the tables!
Over the past few days I spent a fair amount of time grinding NL50 but almost twice as much time discussing NL cash play with a few players who I consider knowledgeable about the game, but for all I know could be complete donks ;) Just kidding guys, thank you for all your help. And although I feel that my game has picked up exponentially even after just a few days, I'm not feeling that spark of excitement, and I can't see myself having the motivation for those long sessions that I do playing O8. So for now I think it's an end to my NLHE cash career.
However, I haven't quite given up on NLHE all together. As all my faithful fans know, I also grind 180s, or I did before I retired for the exam period. I still enjoy playing 180s and in general MTTs, but I know I'm well behind the average player as far as competency in concerned. If only I had a long sustained period of time where I didn't have much to do and could devote a lot of hours towards studying the game. Oh wait, I do :) When I started playing again, the first thing I did was buy a Deucescracked subscription. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision, I had taken the 7 day free trial a few months ago but decided it wasn't good value to purchase the subscription when I was about to take 2 months off. So far I've been using the subscription to watch O8 videos and the odd NLHE cash video that was suggested by friends, (while I'm on it, everyone should watch the Bart Hanson video where he breaks down his own play on Live at the Bike, it's free to watch), but starting tonight I'm going to watch some MTT videos. I know I'm not going to turn into a pro overnight but I'd like to at least hold my own when I inevitably play the odd NLHE MTT.
So let's get a small update going about how O8 has gone recently. I made back to back final tables in my favourite tournament, the $16t 2xChance, but only managed a 3rd and a 5th for around 900$ combined which is still a nice payday, but I would have liked to close another one. I've badgered Stars constantly to add more turbo PLO8 MTTs to the schedule but for now I'm happy to play this one no matter what, it's just the most profitable tournament online in my opinion, maybe eclipsed only by the Sunday Storm. Cash had been going well until today where I ran $500 below EV and dropped quite a chunk but I felt I played well and recognized the spots where I played badly, so I'm taking it on the chin and will be back to the grind shortly.
So I guess that'll be it for now. Thanks everyone for reading the blog, and I'd definitely recommend reading some of the other O8 based blogs listed somewhere on my page. Also, if you're not already there, join the O8 regs Skype group. Good luck at the tables!
Friday, 10 June 2011
Welcome back to normality.
It's a lovely summers day, the sun is shining, and for the first time in 2 months, I am not staring at it through the library window!
Yes, exams are finally over, I think I've done well enough to not have to do resits, and am now a free man! And what would I like to do with my freedom? Ah yes, play poker of course. And when we play poker, we write blogs, isn't that how this shit goes down?
So before I get into a rather long winded explanation about what I hope to achieve this summer and what my goals are, I'll give you a small insight into how the last two months have gone. In a nutshell, brilliant. I'm not sure about whether it was because I was playing a lot less and was able to concentrate more, or the fact that it's short term run good that's just been spread out over a long period because of not playing much at all, but whenever I seemed to sit down at the (virtual) table, I just crushed. Here's a small breakdown of what I've done while "revising" :
-Won the $33 1.5k Guarantee for $750
-Won the $16.50 2x Chance Turbo for $850
-Won it AGAIN for $950
-Cashed the PLO8 Medium SCOOP event for $260
-Broke about even on the cash tables
All in all an extremely profitable period of time in which I was supposed to be playing zero poker but ended up playing very little. What this means for me now is that I can afford to take shots at softer games I pick out at the higher stakes without risking a large percentage of my bankroll, and more importantly, allows me to cash out significant amounts of money in order to pay off my summer. In essence, poker is now my job :) (for the summer......)
So what are we going to do this summer, this calls for another list!:
- Play higher stakes FR O8 cash games. 0.50/1 NL and 1/2 NL
- Grind a lot of O8 MTTs $22+ (and of course the $16t 2x Chance)
- Start playing more LO8 cash (2/4-3/6)
- Learn NLHE cash (0.25/0.50)
I'll make a better effort to keep the blog updated with how I get along with these goals, starting now!
1) O8 cash - Already up around $500 but with few hands and a bit of run good.
2) O8 MTTs - No major cashes yet this month but no serious volume yet either.
3) LO8 cash - Winning a fair bit at 1/2, break even 2/4. Waiting to find a less reg filled 3/6 game before I jump in.
4) NLHE cash - 2k hands and break even. Still learning the nuances of the game.
More detailed breakdowns of my endeavors to come but for now it's a quick update just to scratch my writing itch. Good luck at the tables all!
Yes, exams are finally over, I think I've done well enough to not have to do resits, and am now a free man! And what would I like to do with my freedom? Ah yes, play poker of course. And when we play poker, we write blogs, isn't that how this shit goes down?
So before I get into a rather long winded explanation about what I hope to achieve this summer and what my goals are, I'll give you a small insight into how the last two months have gone. In a nutshell, brilliant. I'm not sure about whether it was because I was playing a lot less and was able to concentrate more, or the fact that it's short term run good that's just been spread out over a long period because of not playing much at all, but whenever I seemed to sit down at the (virtual) table, I just crushed. Here's a small breakdown of what I've done while "revising" :
-Won the $33 1.5k Guarantee for $750
-Won the $16.50 2x Chance Turbo for $850
-Won it AGAIN for $950
-Cashed the PLO8 Medium SCOOP event for $260
-Broke about even on the cash tables
All in all an extremely profitable period of time in which I was supposed to be playing zero poker but ended up playing very little. What this means for me now is that I can afford to take shots at softer games I pick out at the higher stakes without risking a large percentage of my bankroll, and more importantly, allows me to cash out significant amounts of money in order to pay off my summer. In essence, poker is now my job :) (for the summer......)
So what are we going to do this summer, this calls for another list!:
- Play higher stakes FR O8 cash games. 0.50/1 NL and 1/2 NL
- Grind a lot of O8 MTTs $22+ (and of course the $16t 2x Chance)
- Start playing more LO8 cash (2/4-3/6)
- Learn NLHE cash (0.25/0.50)
I'll make a better effort to keep the blog updated with how I get along with these goals, starting now!
1) O8 cash - Already up around $500 but with few hands and a bit of run good.
2) O8 MTTs - No major cashes yet this month but no serious volume yet either.
3) LO8 cash - Winning a fair bit at 1/2, break even 2/4. Waiting to find a less reg filled 3/6 game before I jump in.
4) NLHE cash - 2k hands and break even. Still learning the nuances of the game.
More detailed breakdowns of my endeavors to come but for now it's a quick update just to scratch my writing itch. Good luck at the tables all!
Friday, 6 May 2011
No, I'm not dead.
Well, kind of.
I'm actually working my arse studying for my upcoming exams. As some of you know I'm a second year Physics student at Kings College London and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I write that it's one of the hardest courses that the university offer. I think most students get their motivation to work from wanting to achieve the best possible grade come the end of their course, my motivation comes from pure fear of failing, because unlike a lot of the essay based subject, humanities, it is all too easy to fail a physics exam. So hence, instead of grinding poker sessions, I've been grinding library sessions, and long ones at that.
So hence, without a lot of poker content, it seemed rather redundant to write in a poker blog for a while. But as we all know, all work and no play make Grim a dull boy, and inevitably I was drawn into playing a little poker last week. After somehow managing to lose my library card in a mess of notes, I decided to do some "revision" at home while messing around with a bit of poker. For some inexplicable reason, probably life tilt from working so hard, I thought 1 tabling a $33 PLO8 would relieve my boredom and thus begun half playing, half studying. This sort of worked well until I made it to the final table, then I had to put a little bit more attention into poker and by the time I was heads-up I'd barely read one page of my notes. But at least I shipped it, so I suppose it worked out for the best :) I'll take $800 over Quantum Mechanics any day.
Apart from that epic bink, if I say so myself, I've just been splashing around in the softer NL100 games just to get my head out of revision for a bit, and thus keeping myself sane. Well that and tweeting absolute rubbish. Been break even so far, but then again 300 hands is barely a sample size. Hopefully I can get a bit of experience in the game and possibly play a lot more hands over the Summer and get back on track for SuperNova!
I hope everyone else had a good April (not aimed at the US players obviously) and I look forward to grinding properly in June.
Peace x
I'm actually working my arse studying for my upcoming exams. As some of you know I'm a second year Physics student at Kings College London and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I write that it's one of the hardest courses that the university offer. I think most students get their motivation to work from wanting to achieve the best possible grade come the end of their course, my motivation comes from pure fear of failing, because unlike a lot of the essay based subject, humanities, it is all too easy to fail a physics exam. So hence, instead of grinding poker sessions, I've been grinding library sessions, and long ones at that.
So hence, without a lot of poker content, it seemed rather redundant to write in a poker blog for a while. But as we all know, all work and no play make Grim a dull boy, and inevitably I was drawn into playing a little poker last week. After somehow managing to lose my library card in a mess of notes, I decided to do some "revision" at home while messing around with a bit of poker. For some inexplicable reason, probably life tilt from working so hard, I thought 1 tabling a $33 PLO8 would relieve my boredom and thus begun half playing, half studying. This sort of worked well until I made it to the final table, then I had to put a little bit more attention into poker and by the time I was heads-up I'd barely read one page of my notes. But at least I shipped it, so I suppose it worked out for the best :) I'll take $800 over Quantum Mechanics any day.
Apart from that epic bink, if I say so myself, I've just been splashing around in the softer NL100 games just to get my head out of revision for a bit, and thus keeping myself sane. Well that and tweeting absolute rubbish. Been break even so far, but then again 300 hands is barely a sample size. Hopefully I can get a bit of experience in the game and possibly play a lot more hands over the Summer and get back on track for SuperNova!
I hope everyone else had a good April (not aimed at the US players obviously) and I look forward to grinding properly in June.
Peace x
Friday, 11 March 2011
Dude, put in some volume!
So, if I'm honest, the Supernova chase hasn't been going so well. I began the year at PL50 with the easily attainable goal of 300k hands while maintaining a small or breakeven winrate. Well that didn't go quite to plan. As regular readers of this blog will known, and also any Pl50 reg who played with me know, I got crushed, pretty hard. Even with a couple of binks dispersed through those few weeks, I decimated my bankroll. Luckily for me, I managed to get out of the spiral before I went completely busto, however, this meant the end of my Supernova chase. Or did it?
I recently spoke to another player who's also grinding for Supernova but he's working a little harder than I am. He's grinding PL10 for around 0.08VPP/hand. He estimates he'll need 1.2 million hands this year and he's on pace this year so far at around 100k hands per month, just a sick effort in my opinion. Volume aside, I know how frustrating the PL10 games can be due to their horrific nittiness created by the hoards of weak-tight regs who will undoubtedly never make it past the level, let alone show a profit. I know this player and his game is solid so I have no doubts he'll be moving up soon, but I really admire his determination, not only to play the extreme volume, but also to work on his game in his off time. It's great motivation for me to put in more hands and generally more effort, especially if I ever want to think about Supernova. What's in my favour at the moment is that I'm enjoying my poker and it just doesn't feel like a grind at the moment, so putting in those long sessions aren't as mentally draining as they would otherwise be. I know for a fact that some of the rakeback grinders out there have gotten to the stage where they hate poker, and would love to take a break from the game if only they didn't depend on it for their livelihood, with luck I will never get to that stage.
Anyways, I don't like to make these posts too long, I'm sure they're boring enough as they are. I'm going to post some pretty "lol" hands from the last few days in my next post, and trust me, they will have you in stitches, even if half the time I was crying when they played out. Later y'all.
I recently spoke to another player who's also grinding for Supernova but he's working a little harder than I am. He's grinding PL10 for around 0.08VPP/hand. He estimates he'll need 1.2 million hands this year and he's on pace this year so far at around 100k hands per month, just a sick effort in my opinion. Volume aside, I know how frustrating the PL10 games can be due to their horrific nittiness created by the hoards of weak-tight regs who will undoubtedly never make it past the level, let alone show a profit. I know this player and his game is solid so I have no doubts he'll be moving up soon, but I really admire his determination, not only to play the extreme volume, but also to work on his game in his off time. It's great motivation for me to put in more hands and generally more effort, especially if I ever want to think about Supernova. What's in my favour at the moment is that I'm enjoying my poker and it just doesn't feel like a grind at the moment, so putting in those long sessions aren't as mentally draining as they would otherwise be. I know for a fact that some of the rakeback grinders out there have gotten to the stage where they hate poker, and would love to take a break from the game if only they didn't depend on it for their livelihood, with luck I will never get to that stage.
Anyways, I don't like to make these posts too long, I'm sure they're boring enough as they are. I'm going to post some pretty "lol" hands from the last few days in my next post, and trust me, they will have you in stitches, even if half the time I was crying when they played out. Later y'all.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Sorry for not posting.
Well the title says it all really. I guess in the big scheme of things, 10 days is not an extended period of time, but if I'm going to keep a poker blog, it only makes sense to update it regularly. The reason for my lax approach to making posts is due to real life business to attend to. University work had caught up with me and my lecturers had decided to drop a few deadlines onto me in the past few weeks so writing in the blog took a sideline to writing about Fraunhofer diffraction and Fourier Transforms. (If you're interested in that sort of thing, which I'm sure most of you are not, don't talk to me. I'm not interested either. ;) )
Poker-wise there isn't much to update you on. If I haven't got any time to write, I haven't got any time to play. Thus I have not played. I'm hoping to put in a little volume in the next few days once I'm caught up with all the sleep I lost when working on various assignments and when I have to energy to put in a decent grind. It's actually a shame that I had to work so hard this week because I was running fairly well at the beginning of the month and I was putting in some decent sessions. With a bit of luck I can get my Supernova push back on track and possibly even make some money. I am slightly down this month $ wise but in general EV I'm think I'm doing well enough, and I'm enjoying my poker, which is the main thing.
There's a couple of topics I want to write about in the coming days, e.g. volume, blogging, pot limit compared to no limit, etc. Those will all come in due time, as well as some hand histories from last week that I think will make everyone giggle a little bit.
So for now I'll leave it at that. Just like to say good luck to lincolini in his profit prop bet for March, mainly because I have money on it. And also good luck to Brad in turning around his horrible downswing. Later y'all.
Poker-wise there isn't much to update you on. If I haven't got any time to write, I haven't got any time to play. Thus I have not played. I'm hoping to put in a little volume in the next few days once I'm caught up with all the sleep I lost when working on various assignments and when I have to energy to put in a decent grind. It's actually a shame that I had to work so hard this week because I was running fairly well at the beginning of the month and I was putting in some decent sessions. With a bit of luck I can get my Supernova push back on track and possibly even make some money. I am slightly down this month $ wise but in general EV I'm think I'm doing well enough, and I'm enjoying my poker, which is the main thing.
There's a couple of topics I want to write about in the coming days, e.g. volume, blogging, pot limit compared to no limit, etc. Those will all come in due time, as well as some hand histories from last week that I think will make everyone giggle a little bit.
So for now I'll leave it at that. Just like to say good luck to lincolini in his profit prop bet for March, mainly because I have money on it. And also good luck to Brad in turning around his horrible downswing. Later y'all.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Bye February you heartless bitch!
Ah finally February is over.
Probably a slight overreaction to call Feb a rough month, but psychologically, it's been pretty draining. I've moved up and down from the $12/180s more times than I could count, cash play hadn't really been going that well, more of a steady decline than one would hope for, and I hadn't really binked anything MTT wise. Overall, I was down a little bit for the month but if I'm honest, I hadn't really played that well and I didn't deserve to come out of it a big winner.
But all of this is going to change!! I finally took the time to organise the funds on my account, stake money and personal money, so now I can almost start fresh. So let me tell you what I've done.
Probably a slight overreaction to call Feb a rough month, but psychologically, it's been pretty draining. I've moved up and down from the $12/180s more times than I could count, cash play hadn't really been going that well, more of a steady decline than one would hope for, and I hadn't really binked anything MTT wise. Overall, I was down a little bit for the month but if I'm honest, I hadn't really played that well and I didn't deserve to come out of it a big winner.
But all of this is going to change!! I finally took the time to organise the funds on my account, stake money and personal money, so now I can almost start fresh. So let me tell you what I've done.
- I worked out exactly how much my bankroll was for the turbo 180s. I won't go into specific figures but I'm not that far off a solid $12s bankroll and I'm more than happily rolled for the $7s. I'll also mention that now because they have been added to the MTT tab and not just the Sng tab, these have been running like crazy so now moving back up to the $12s is a much less painful task.
- I've left enough personal $ in the account to be rolled for PL25. Now my plan for this money is to refocus my PLO8 cash game, which has been seriously lacking the past few weeks, and run it up to a safe PL50 roll. From there I won't just straight into the PL50 game, but I'll learn NLO8 6max. I don't think this game is quite yet solved and I'd like to learn it as I have been told that the fish quite like the format.
- Now, if you were reading carefully, you would have seen that I said $ in the previous paragraph rather than just "money". This is because I transferred what was left of my bankroll into Euros. This is because I'm going to play NLHE cash as well. My NLHE cash game is poor at best and I could never consider myself a decent poker player if I wasn't at least average in one of the more basic variants of the game. I've started with a modest 10NL bankroll and will play FR until I'm sustaining a decent winrate. I'm also taking it as an opportunity to gain mass multi-tabling experience, i.e. 20 tables+, by emulating frosty012's tactics. If you haven't seen his video yet, please do, you can find a link in one of my earlier posts.
Anyways, I'll let you guys know how any of this goes, for now, watch this!!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Ah screw the 1r!!
If you're a fan of well written meaningful blogs, then this is not the post for you. This is just a tilt writing!
So this stupid tournament is a $1 + R, 3x Turbo (3x meaning the rebuy period is 3x longer). If you want to be anywhere near a decent position, you need to have around 100k by the first break, so as you can understand, it's a bit of a crapshoot. Luckily for me, I had some donkey to my left constantly calling my shoves, and my shoves alone, with atc. Spite calls are awesome.
So made it to the break with 100k and continued to chip up until I got up to 750k before losing AK vs AJ to a short-ish stack, which by itself was tilting enough, but that's not the tiltworthy tale that I promised you! So I build the stack up again through multiple steals and a flip so before you know it I'm up to 1.8 mirrion orso (Yes, I said MIRRION!). Then, tilt city.
UTG makes just over a minraise, I'm UTG+1 with AKo and shove, folds back to UTG and he snaps with KQs. Flops a blank but turn is a motherfucking bitch of a card, Qc. Another reason to hate women ain't it! River's a brick and I'm out in around 50th for $45. If I ship that pot I'm top 5 stacks and on the way to a 1k+ score (1st pays 4.5k which is just ridiculous for a $1r). Ah well, FML.
Well there's a little tilt post, pointless I know, but meh it's my blog, I can write whatever I want lol. Scroll down and you might find some more insightful articles, even if I use the word "insightful" loosely. Later y'all.
So this stupid tournament is a $1 + R, 3x Turbo (3x meaning the rebuy period is 3x longer). If you want to be anywhere near a decent position, you need to have around 100k by the first break, so as you can understand, it's a bit of a crapshoot. Luckily for me, I had some donkey to my left constantly calling my shoves, and my shoves alone, with atc. Spite calls are awesome.
So made it to the break with 100k and continued to chip up until I got up to 750k before losing AK vs AJ to a short-ish stack, which by itself was tilting enough, but that's not the tiltworthy tale that I promised you! So I build the stack up again through multiple steals and a flip so before you know it I'm up to 1.8 mirrion orso (Yes, I said MIRRION!). Then, tilt city.
UTG makes just over a minraise, I'm UTG+1 with AKo and shove, folds back to UTG and he snaps with KQs. Flops a blank but turn is a motherfucking bitch of a card, Qc. Another reason to hate women ain't it! River's a brick and I'm out in around 50th for $45. If I ship that pot I'm top 5 stacks and on the way to a 1k+ score (1st pays 4.5k which is just ridiculous for a $1r). Ah well, FML.
Well there's a little tilt post, pointless I know, but meh it's my blog, I can write whatever I want lol. Scroll down and you might find some more insightful articles, even if I use the word "insightful" loosely. Later y'all.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Few thoughts on Multi-tabling
From as far back in my poker career as I can remember, I’ve always played more than one table at once. I vaguely recollect bringing up the lobby on the tiny euro site that I began my addiction on and noticing that there were two tables of 5c/10c running and quickly decided that I should split up the 10 euros I’d deposited and play on 2 tables instead of one, after all, double the tables, double the profit right? Needless to say, I learnt a lot that day about how quickly one could lose 10 Euros.
When I first started grinding PLO8 I’d taken a step down from my usual stakes of NL25 to PL10. I’d read enough by this stage to know that to attain a similar hourly rate as before I’d have to play more tables of the lower stakes games, so made the decision to 8-10 table my new game. Like before, it was a steep learning curve, almost as steep as my losses column. It took weeks of practice before I even felt remotely comfortable playing that many games and even then I was still struggling to make correct profitable decisions in that short period between the table popping up and Pokerstars delivery that horrible siren that even to this day gets me a little tilted.
Now this was at the “beginning” of my poker career, around a year ago. 6 months ago I started grinding the NLHE Sngs and began 4-6 tabling them. Even with a decent ROI in these games, the hourly rate is going to be miniscule if you don’t mass table them. I took some tips from a few players in the stable and worked my way up quickly to playing around 20-30 simultaneously. This may sound like a lot but if you think about it, it’s not that hard. While you’re loading up all the games, you’ll only be playing the early stages where the blinds are very small and you’re playing extremely tight, or at least that’s how I play them, and by the time you get down to the deep end, you’ve busted more than half your games and you’re essentially playing 10 orso full ring push/fold games, requiring little to no real thought, once you’re comfortable in the games of course. So in essence, it was easier than multi-tabling my 6 max PLO8 games.
So there you have a small history lesson, if anyone ever decides to take a class on how I’d risen through the micro ranks to become the most profitable poker player on the planet (lol), but it’s not really a discussion piece. I admire those who 24 table the games comfortably, by that I mean not nitting it up and slowly bleeding away money and essentially becoming a rakeback pro, but never thought it was going to be something I’d do myself. But the other day I watched a video by frosty012 that he’d posted on his blog a while back.
If you watch the video you notice that he’s not frantically clicking buttons, timing out on tables or haemorrhaging money, he just makes it seem easy. Now, granted he is playing FR NLHE which doesn’t exactly require a huge amount of involvement, or at least compared to 6 max PLO8, but it still gets me thinking about my TableNinja configuration and even my general layout. It’s well and good going over HHs and working on my game, but maybe profit isn’t all dependant on how well you play poker. Like in the same way a good player with bad bankroll management will not succeed in the long run, I think a player with a bad grinding setup will not succeed either. I’m eager to see what others think about this so please drop me a comment or IM me about the subject, or anything else for that matter. I’m playing around with my setup at the moment but for now I’m going to try frosty’s idea of stacking my tables and using TN to bring selected tables out of the stack when I’m involved in a pot, even though he mentions that he doesn’t usually do that while he plays. I’m also going to try the Stack and Tile program and see if that suits my style better. Obviously it would be helpful to get another monitor involved so I’ll hopefully be getting one of those sorted soon.
So, there’s another quite pointless blog post to relieve the boredom for some of you, even if I’ve just put you a little deeper into your coma. Later y’all.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
So what's new...
So I’m a few days into my first 12s shot at the moment, and like a true professional, it’s time to evaluate. I’m almost half way through my 50 buy-in shot and things haven’t been going so well, if the numbers are anything to go by.
So far it’s only been the solitary min-cash but actually I can feel my game improving already and I know this is down to several factors. For one, I’ve drastically cut down on the number of tables I’m playing. As a rule of thumb, I load up around 25-30 $2/180s and within 30-45 minutes I’ve busted enough tournaments to leave me with a core group of around 10 tables where I’m fairly deep and am running up a stack. Because I’m only taking a 50 Buy-in shot this time around, I cannot really afford to spread my attention so thin in order to go for the big scores, I must maximise the value I can extract from each tournament. This is not saying that what I was doing before was wrong, I still believe that is the best way to make money in the long run, but as I’m not yet comfortable playing the 12s and dropping a significant portion of my bankroll in one sitting, it makes cutting down on volume a sound “economic” decision. Most importantly, I’m cutting down on the number of tables so that I can take detailed notes on every $12/180 grinder. At this level, the majority of the real winning players are professional grinders, playing not only my games but levels much higher. When grinding these tournaments for a living, you can be sure that they have thousands upon thousands of hands with the same players and have better reads than I can ever attain through my sporadic play as an amateur. The only way to catch up to them is to closely observe their play and hope to uncover leaks and weaknesses in their game to possibly exploit. A great measure of whether a grind is solid or not is to scope their winnings at this level, and some of the graphs I uncovered and just ungodly. I won’t go into names in case they aren’t comfortable with it, but some of the top winners at this level and maintaining a 25-30% ROI over tens of thousands of games. It’s just mind-blowing to me and can only be a seriously long term goal to achieve this myself.
Anyway, enough of the NLHE talk, this is an O8 blog! I’ve stepped back from the cash grind for a while because I was running quite far below EV and it was causing me to lose focus and tilt a little, so I made the correct decision last week to just take some time off. I am however playing some MTTs on the side, purely for enjoyment rather than monetary gain, but as we all know, the two run hand in hand. I took second in a small turbo the other day for around $200 as well as a few small cashes dotted throughout the week, nothing to report back on. I am however keeping a keen eye on the games and should I find a table too hard to pass hard, no matter what the stakes, I’d happily jump in. Luckily for my bankroll, if any games were to exist, it would without doubt occur at PL50 or lower.
Away from poker, well not entirely, it’s still a degen story, I read Haseeb Qureshi’s account of the Ashton Griffin 70 miles in 24 hours prop bet. Obviously the story in itself is enough to be drawn into, but the way Haseeb writes the account is just brilliant. The man obviously has a talent for telling a tale and although I knew he was a CardRunners instructor, I wasn’t aware that he was a keen blogger. For all of you here’s the link. I think the level of writing throughout the 2 part saga is something to aspire to and I hope he continues to blog in the same manner in time to come.
Well there you have it, and rather long blog post, with even something not entirely poker related. Who knows I may even write a bit more about things regular people give a shit about in blogs to come. For now, good luck at the table everybody.
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Woohoo it's 12s time!
As you can see, I've been on a bit of a heater recently.
99% of the games on that graphs are NLHE $2/180s and the rest comprise of PLO8 $6.50 STTs and 10 orso $7/180s. The final push as you can see right on the end is a $7/180 I binked the other night.
What this means is that I am now rolled for the $12/180s! It's taken a while due to the lack of volume I put in early on, but the more I played, the better my game got and even though I ran pretty hot, I could see that I was making more correct decisions, and more importantly, getting my aggression right. The easiest part of the game to get wrong is shoving in the wrong spots or not shoving in the correct spots. Granted, I always have a push chart to resort to should I need, but when you're mass multitabling it's near on impossible to to read the chart for every decision, so you have to learn to eyeball the correct shoves.
So for now, I'm going to 1-4 table 12s and take shit loads of notes, because I know that the 12s is just so reg heavy, I need to seriously get reads on everyone if I'm ever going to beat this level and hopefully make some real money! $1k swings are so easy in this game so if I can start winning a small amount until my roll gets to a safe amount then start to mass multitable them, we could be onto a winner ;)
Hopefully everyone else is having some run good as well :) Take it easy y'all.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Taking a step back
Just gonna write a short post this time, feeling a bit hazy. I've been a bit lazy again with post updating but to be fair that's likely to continue haha.
Cash play has just been crushing me recently, close to $500 under EV since the beginning of the year, so I think I'll take a small step back for now, and actually carry through with it this time! Although I'm losing an absolute bucket load this year through cash play, I'm winning close to 3 times that through MTT and Sng play, so why not make the smart play.
On top of my $1.2k score in the $16.50 PLO8 Turbo, I've made a number of $100+ scores and also won a $7/180 for $358. The Sng bankroll is actually at the level now where I can move up to the $12/180s and hopefully make some real money. I'm getting tired of stable-mates talking about their standard $1k days, both up and down. It's time for me to get ballin!!!
If anyone from 2p2 is reading, please give your support for Borys313 to play Isildur HU PLO8. I know it's a longshot but some support may get Pokerstars thinking. You can find the thread here.
Finally, I'm looking to improve my NLHE game, other than the turbo 180s. So if anyone out there is a cash game player or a deep stack ninja, drop me a comment and maybe we can get a bit of discussion going.
That's all for now, later y'all.
Cash play has just been crushing me recently, close to $500 under EV since the beginning of the year, so I think I'll take a small step back for now, and actually carry through with it this time! Although I'm losing an absolute bucket load this year through cash play, I'm winning close to 3 times that through MTT and Sng play, so why not make the smart play.
On top of my $1.2k score in the $16.50 PLO8 Turbo, I've made a number of $100+ scores and also won a $7/180 for $358. The Sng bankroll is actually at the level now where I can move up to the $12/180s and hopefully make some real money. I'm getting tired of stable-mates talking about their standard $1k days, both up and down. It's time for me to get ballin!!!
If anyone from 2p2 is reading, please give your support for Borys313 to play Isildur HU PLO8. I know it's a longshot but some support may get Pokerstars thinking. You can find the thread here.
Finally, I'm looking to improve my NLHE game, other than the turbo 180s. So if anyone out there is a cash game player or a deep stack ninja, drop me a comment and maybe we can get a bit of discussion going.
That's all for now, later y'all.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Bink!
Title says it all really. I don't usually play the $16.50 2x Chance Turbo in the afternoon because I'll be at university or something equally time wasting, but I had a free afternoon and decided to give it a shot, and I won it!
I never had any huge suckouts, just a constant stream of getting it in good and holding, which in O8 isn't as easy as it sounds. When we got down to the final table, everyone was playing really tight so I took the opportunity to steal as many blinds as I could. Using my experience from turbo Sngs, I knew the importance of stealing from late position in order to pad your stack out, a concept the other players hadn't seemed to grasp. I feel it's more important to steal blinds in O8 because people aren't so aware about which hands to "shove" so the average stack is alot smaller than they usually are in NLHE turbo MTTs, in fact for most of the tournament I had between 3-5 BBs, almost nothing.
Just over $1.2k was amazing for my bankroll and hopefully now I can go on to playing higher stakes, I'd like to reg the $22 and $33 MTTs and also PL100, but seeming as the cash grind has been pretty terrible this month, it's going to take a long time relying on solely cash. Thankfully Sngs are also going well and I'm maintaining almost a 50% ROI in the $6.50s over a growing sample. I plan to stay at the $6.50s for quite a while as I've been told that the $16s are a massive reg fest, so I'd like to make a $1000 BR solely for them before I move up, which at this rate could be fairly soon. I feel my Sng and MTT play has got a lot better over the last few weeks but my cash play has rather stagnated, but I'm still working on it, so with luck the cash play will turn around soon.
Quite a bit has happened pokerwise since my last post so expect a few quickfire updates in the days to come. Later y'all.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Little Update
So once again laziness and generic excuses prevented me from updating the blog regularly, but nevertheless, I'll give you guys a bit of an update.
PLO8 SnGs are going well. HEM is telling me I'm crushing them with almost a 60% ROI, albeit over a fairly small sample. I haven't really put in a huge amount of volume, but it's been fun to mix them into my regular grind as a way of making sure poker doesn't become stale for me. I'm looking to make around $600 profit at the $6.50 level before I move up to the $16s, but obviously this is going to be a long term goal as I'm not playing a huge amount. Bankroll wise it wouldn't be a problem for me to jump into the $16s but I'd like to confirm to myself that I can beat the $6s with no trouble.
I've had a bit more of an urge to play some NLHE, so most of my volume this week has been at the $2/180s. I went on a bit of a heater at the end of last week and it has partially carried on to this week and at this rate I could be rolled for the 12s within another 3-400 SnGs. My short term goal is to play 200 of these SnGs this week as this means I would qualify for the weekly competition we have within my staking stable. It's only a bit of fun but the winner gets 6 free $12 shots, so it's worth my while to put in a bit of volume, besides to obvious incentive of getting to reg the $12s faster. Strangely though, the standard of the $2s has been pretty bad this week, made even strange due to the fact MTTc is having a $2/180 competition this week and many top $12 grinders are taking part. Brumberland, a grinder, is putting on a real master class. In the first 3 days he put in almost 400 SnGs for a total profit of more than $1.1k, pretty sick. 4 grinders from my stable took part, but all had losing days to begin with and considering Brumberland's complete ownage, decided it wasn't worth carrying on. Good effort though lads.
As far as PLO8 cash is concerned, I had a good chat with a mate about the benefits of shortstacking NLO8. I knew my knowledge of the game was pretty poor but I didn't realise how poor it really was. After a brief lesson on what to do, and basically coming to terms with the fact that I was doing pretty much everything wrong, I decided to put what I'd learnt into action and so far it's been going pretty well. I've only put in 1k hands so far this week, but I've been early a very decent winrate and the VPP rate is not bad either. I won't put in a huge volume yet because HEM tells me I'm running pretty good and I can definitely see leaks in my game so it doesn't make sense to grind these hard until I feel comfortable.
After the poor start to my year it's been very nice to get back on track and even better to actually be in the black for this year. Looking back on where I was 2 weeks ago, I've actually made around $1k since that sickening downswing, so hopefully I can keep this rate up for the rest of the year.
I'll leave it at this for now. Little congrats to Fran for his nice run in the PCA side events and Dave for his small MTT score the other day. Also Max for his epic chop in the Sunday night HORSE. Lastly massive congrats to myself for taking down a $3 PL5CD MTT for $49 ;) Get in my son.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
PLO8 SnGs
So I feel comfortable with PLO8 cash, and now I’m comfortable with NLHE SnGs. I didn’t really see why I couldn’t combine the two games, and profit. Although PLO8 doesn’t really have the player pool to play MTT Sngs, Pokerstars does indeed have a sufficient numbers to grind STTs and maintain a solid win rate. I’m not saying I’m looking to make them my bread and butter, but I feel it would be beneficial to add these games to my arsenal should I ever need a fall back.
I jumped straight into the $6.50 level with varying results. Although I felt that my cash game background was useful in knowing the basics of the game, it was definitely apparent that I was missing something vital if I were to beat the game consistently, so I turned to 2+2. Time and time again, this uber useful resource has been a goldmine of knowledge and advice. I read a ton of posts on STT game play, especially the turbo form which is more popular on Stars, and I learnt quite a bit on early level strategy, specifically how tight and passive I should play in the early levels, for example, limping premium hands in position then playing them slowly if I hit the flop in order to build a pot for later streets. It then struck me, that through the contacts I had made on the site, I was on good terms with some excellent Sng grinders who had crushed the $16 level and beyond. It would have been foolish of me not to have asked for advice.
Angribob came back to me with some premium strategy on pretty much all aspects of the game. I’d like to thank him for the long post he wrote for me and no doubt the time and effort he put into jotting down his thoughts on (virtual) paper. One of the funnier things he mentioned was that he believed most players at thee $6.50 were droolers, hell bent on getting their money in the middle with less than premium holdings. I’d always worked on the principle that all players are solid until proven otherwise, I believed this was the best way to go around cash games as it meant I didn’t lose a lot of money to the better players before I’d properly analysed their game. However, the more Sngs I play, the more I’ve come to see how right he is. The players in the games are unbelievably bad, even the regs. They’d either bust out in the first 2 levels by making absurd plays with for example, top pair on a low board and frequently calling 3 bets with middling cards or they’d play ridiculously tight, even in the latter stages where more often than not they had less than 10 big blinds. Some of what I’d considered previously to be the better regs turned out to be so predictably weak/tight when the blinds got steeper, that I could abuse them effortlessly.
Like I said before, I’m not planning on playing these games for a living, but while the games are this soft, it would be a good idea to steal some dead money now and again, and it makes poker less of a grind if I’m not constantly playing the same games.
That’s it for another Grim rant about a subject no one other than myself cares about. If anyone reading this suddenly gets the urge to play a Sng or 2, look out for me and we’ll have a bit of banter at the table. Later y’all.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Small update
It’s been a pretty rotten start to the year as far as cash games are concerned. I’m having my worst month ever and I literally had only played for around 4 days. Those few days though were enough to get me stuck close to $800. If I were to take any positives out of those monstrous losses, it would be that I managed to put in well over 6000 hands, which at least shows that I have the ability to grind hard should I need to. For the time being, however, I do not think it is a good decision to keep on playing, as I would definitely destroy my bankroll. Sometimes you have to make the smart decision and take a step back, even if it makes my Supernova grind a hell of a lot more difficult.
But, being the degen that I am, I couldn’t step away from poker all together. I decided to put in some time on my NLHE Sng game. I am still staked for these, and receiving free coaching from one of the best 180 turbo grinders out there, not sure if it’s my place to put his name out there but if any of the turbo grinders are reading it, they can probably guess who it is. He had put a lot of faith in me, even though I had not put in anywhere near enough volume, and had already taken a reload off him. Thankfully, the time off from O8 had renewed my interest in NLHE and it’s been a pretty profitable few days. Although I’m still not able to put in the same amount of volume as the other grinders in the stable, I still managed to hit around 150 Sngs for the week, and made a not too shabby profit of $300 which keeps me solidly out of makeup and around halfway to my goal of attaining a bankroll large enough to take a shot at the 12s. The upshot of this is that it makes the time I take away from O8 cash not too detrimental to my Supernova chase. At 5VPPs per Sng at the 12s. I could still knock out around 1000 VPPs per week which doesn’t quite get me to Supernova, but means that I earn a half decent rate away from cash games.
The 2s have been super soft recently. I don’t claim to be a Sng superstar, but I can definitely see a skill edge forming over the field, which honestly given the training provided to me should be apparent by now. My goal by the end of the month is to finish with the 2s and take my first 12s shot. I will start playing O8 cash again, but sparingly and perhaps take a step back from my usual volume. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had moved down from PL50 to PL25 because of the hit my BR took, and I’m going to stay there until I can prove to myself that I am a winner at the level. The more I look back at those hectic few days, the more I feel I tilted unnecessarily, and lost way more money than I can put down to variance. It’s a weakness I thought I didn’t have but as my database is quite clearly telling me, it does exist. Right now I am reading articles on how to deal with tilt and speaking with other players who experienced the same thing.
That’s all for now folks, I’ll be writing another post tomorrow. See y’all at the tables!
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
And the downswing continues
So I wrote the last post almost 24 hours ago, and in that time period I managed to lose another $300 :( I've moved down to PL25 in an attempt to stop the rot but that doesn't seemed to have done the job. Although I have to admit, I didn't feel like I was playing my best, mainly because I have less respect for the money which is a huge leak in my opinion.
I'm a bit disheartened at the moment but I know I have to keep playing through the pain, because a downswing doesn't last forever. I'll be back on my feet in no time. I'm still well enough rolled to comfortably play PL25, and with 4k hands logged in the past 2 days, my love of grinding is well and truly back.
I hope everyone else is having a better start to 2011 than I am!
New Year Post
Happy New Years all. Once again I have failed miserably in my attempt to keep this blog updated, so badly in fact that December is actually empty. It’s not that the urge to write isn’t there, I certainly will still express my opinions on various subjects and I still believe that my keeping a blog I can only improve my game, it’s just that I’ve been stretched for time. The holidays are a very busy time for a student living away from home, busier in fact than term time. One has to do the obligatory visits to every friend who’s been left behind, which in Portsmouth is pretty much the whole lot, while also paying enough attention to the family, which is easier said than done. Anyway, enough of this nonsense, how about I talk about actual poker.
So, as I may or may not have mentioned in earlier posts, I’m aiming for Supernova this year. From what I can estimate, it would take me roughly 300k hands to reach this goal, assuming I don’t move up in stakes for the year, which is also a goal of mine. This relates roughly to 30k hands per month as I believe it is better for me to stay ahead of pace. Once again I will make an attempt to keep this blog updated with how far along I am at regular intervals.
It’s January 3rd now, and although I haven’t put in a long session yet due to New Year commitments, I have logged 1.5k hands, but unfortunately I lost $300 in the process. It’s a bit disheartening to start the New Year off so badly, but it’s important to keep in mind that downswings do happen, and through hard work and discipline, I can make the money back in no time. I need to keep working on my game, review hand histories and get as much advice as I can from better players.
I’ll leave it at this for now, but I will be writing more soon. Good luck for the year all, but not too much if you’re playing PL50 ;)
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