Superstition

I almost hate to post this. I'm running so incredibly hot in the SNG's right now I'm afraid if I tell anyone I'll crash and burn.

My sample size is still low for the $12 turbos. 60 tourneys to be exact. In that 60 I've managed a 53.3% ITM and a 44.4% ROI. That comes out to over $26/hour when I'm playing. That's a slight bit more than I make in my real job.

When reality decides to snap back I should settle down to a more believable 20% ROI. The run is nice, and I hope it lasts, but all good things do eventually come to an end. The players are a bit worse at this level than they were at the $6.50 turbos. I suppose most recreational players play the $12's and those that are struggling to really learn play the $6.50's. It's not all that suprising that it works out that way.

Anyhoo, my good fortune has resulted in some good bankroll building and I'm now at $1,038.08. It took me 49 days to go from $300 to just over $1,200 (I withdrew 200 a few weeks back). That is certainly a lot faster than I did it when I started this blog way back when. I will therefore consider this bankroll building experiment a success!

Recent Success

I've been on a bit of a tear lately. Last night playing in the PSO league and also in The Mookie I managed to final table both. In the league event I was a dominant chip leader through most of the tournament and then got unlucky at the final table. In The Mookie I held the chip lead as well for quite a while but then I tightened up to much when we were down to the final two tables. This left me without enough ammo to mount much of a fight at the final table.

The two events were eerily similar.
PSO League:
71 entrants
180 Minutes of play
7th place

The Mookie:
73 entrants
182 Minutes of play
6th place

Pretty weird huh?

Anyway the $12 turbo SNG's have also been going well and my bankroll has seen exponential growth this week. I'm now up to $908.70.

Let's see how long it takes to give it all back :)

300

No this is not a review of the movie. I haven't even seen it. Instead I've reached the 300 milestone in $6.50 Turbo SNG's. Things have gone well so far and I think it's time to take a shot at the $12 SNG's. I've played a few already and I don't see a difference in the quality of play so I'll expect to maintain my previous results.

Stats:
Ran: 300
ROI: 18.5%
ITM: 42.3%
Profit: $361.20

Both my ROI and ITM have increased slightly over the last 100 SNG's so that a good thing.



I've also managed to lower my 4th place finishes and picked up the slack with 3rd place finishes. First is where you want to be but I'm glad to get over the 4th place finish hump.



Here is my winnings graph just because it looks purrty.

I'm Back?

Last nights Riverchasers tourney was a very fun, and very educational experience.

Staying true to my word I began the event with a much looser range than I normally would. I did not stay as passive as I had intended as the players were allowing me to be both loose and aggressive. It was quite the eye opening experience taking this tact from the very beginning. It also helped that I had hoyazo at my table for most of the time. He stated that he would be playing tighter than a mouses ass till we reached the points so I took advantage of his big blind at every opportunity. He only played back at me once and I went ahead and released my hand. He then showed "the hammer", but I'm alright with that. I took much more from him than I gave.

I found that in order to really play this style I had to pay much more attention to my opponents than I usually do. I always try to pick things up, but this time I really had to put my opponents on ranges. This worked out swimmingly and I was able to adapt to each player pretty easily.

There were only three hands throughout the entire tournament where I knew preflop what I wanted to accomplish, and how I was going to play post flop. Of these three hand I played one incorrectly and won, played one correctly and won, and finally played one correctly and lost. I've thought about discussing the one I played incorrectly but I'm going to wait and see if any other bloggers mention the hand before I address it. This is the first hand in the tournament that hoy actually used the chat window so it may be mentioned.

I hit a real rough spot near the end where I thought I would bust out before the money. I made a correct read and got unlucky. This left me last in chips but the same player later doubled me up to put me in the top 3 so it worked out.

When we hit the final table I decided to approach it like I would a SNG. This led me to make some plays that others may have viewed as reckless or incorrect, but I was shooting for first place and I was going to do what I thought I needed to get there. This worked out for me until we were down to the final three. I had 65% of the chips in play at this point

Dry Patch

In consideration of my recent MTT drought I've decided to completely rework my game.

Up until this point my strength has been preflop play. I've done an adequate job in the past and posted some decent yet moderate results. I also believe this is why I tend to play the SNG's well. They are primarily (especially in the turbo's) a preflop game.

My admitted achilles heel is postflop play. Although I've admitted this before nothing was ever really done to correct the issue.

Now I'm taking drastic steps. I'm going to adopt a preflop strategy that would be considered by many "experts" to be that of a donkey. That is to say I'm going to become a loose passive preflop player. Or as I like to call it, "Starting Hands By Gavin Smith". Now I'm no expert, but I'm also not an idiot. I'll try my best to avoid total domination situations unless of course I feel I can get paid off when my hand hits.

This new line will force me to become more comfortable with postflop play in MTT's. The structure of online tournaments generally does not leave much wiggle room in stack to blind ratios. If I can build a stack early I should be able to exploit more situations. This will also more than likely lead to earlier exits than I'm used to. Of the rooms I currently play at UltimateBet offers the best early round structure. They also offer a decent quantity of low buy in events so I'll mostly play there.

As always wish me luck and we'll see if I can learn something along the way.

Really

Upon reading Negreanu's latest blog post I said to myself, "Gee your life must suck."

Change of Pace

My rakeback payment was deposited into my Full Tilt account the other day. I knew it was going to drop since I had dropped my limits but I didn't realize the extent of the... ummmm... droppage?

A glorious $26.22 in rakeback was all I mustered last month. It would probably serve me better to work on my UltimateBet bonus than work toward the rakeback.

The SNG's have continued to work well for me but I'm dumping all my profits into losing MTT's, so I'm not making much progress. I'm also starting to grow weary of continuous SNG's and I've been feeling that itch to play the cash games again.

With that in mind I decided to play at UB and clear some of my bonus playing NL. I wanted to control my bankroll and considering my previous cash game records I decided to play a single table of $25NL. After 569 hands I had lost $7.44. Actually not to bad considering I was down about $50 at one point. I've forgotten the frustration of grinding out the small pots only to make one mental error and lose it all. Fortunately I cleared $5.89 in bonus so it was close to a break even endeavor.

I think I'll still play the cash game one or two days a week though so I can have some variety.

Oh, before I forget. Due to my oldest boy getting a myspace page I decided to get one as well. I'm going to use for personal blogging and the poker content will stay here. Feel free to check me out at my MySpace page.

bankroll: $357.92

Don't know why I bother playing this stupid ass idiotic fucked up poor excuse for a game anyway.

One Of Those Days

Today was one of those days that you wish would never happen. Every move is wrong, every dominant hand is cracked. It happens, It sucks, Get over it.

Bankroll: $285.87

I hope the Mookie turns out better

Hoy Lesson Learned

Never Ever... Ever... believe that your opponent might actually not make a donkey move just because it's a blogger tournament. Always think of your opponents in the lowest common denominator and you will be fine.

Lesson Learned

Disconnect Blues

I've played several MTT's this week with little success. I haven't played any in a while so it took a little adjustment switching from the SNG mentality.

In the short term my journey back to the MTT realm has been negative EV. Last night marked my first cash of the week and I did it in true grinder fashion as the best hand I saw preflop was pocket nines. It took everything I had to not get impatient and blow away my chances. In the end I went out 74th in a field of 826 for a small cash.

The SNG's continue to treat me well but I've been bitten by the MTT bug. As much as I'd like to play some every night I'm going to stick to the Blogger tourneys for the most part. At least until my bankroll is to a more comfortable level.

bankroll: $351.77

Current Build - 200

I've gone over the 200 mark in SNG's since restarting the bankroll. So far things are running very smoothly. I've mixed in a few $12 and $24 SNG's when I was rushed to make my full tilt points a few times. These are still outside my bankroll but I was fortunate enough to not lose to much when I played them.

I spent a bit to much on tournament entry fees over the last week so I gave back about a $100 in bankroll that I really couldn't afford. I am still up though from my last bankroll entry on March 27th so I can't complain too much.

Stats:
Ran: 207
ROI: 16.6%
ITM: 41.1%
Profit: $259.80

My ROI and ITM is down just slightly from my 100 SNG mark but I'm staying pretty consistent. Consistency is good.


The finish distribution is flushing out a little more now. My wins are increasing but so are my fourth place finishes.

Answers

I haven't played much poker over the last few days. I had to take my mother to the hospital on Friday. She has chronic back pain and she was having pain which was more severe than usual. She's still at the hospital but I should be able to take her home tomorrow.


I've gotten a few comments that I would like to address in lieu of poker content.

First up was Grinder who posed the following comment:

"I'm surprised your ROI is only 17% when you ITM is 42%. Seems you should be winning more often. I wonder if you are playing too tight so you are getting ITM with a small amount of chips instead of begin the whale."

I will admit to playing a bit tighter near the bubble than I used to. A year ago I would have been attacking as much as possible at the bubble but I've since felt a slight adjustment was needed. That's not to say I am a nit who has the smallest stack when the money hits. I would estimate that about 75% of the time I am not the short stack when the final three are left. With that said I am not the biggest either most of the time. The majority of the time I am in second place and I'm quite comfortable with that.

In the post the comment referred to I had a frequency of finishes: 1st=14.4 2nd=13.5 3rd=14.4
This is pretty flat, but now that I've added another 80 tourneys it looks a bit different: 1st=16.1 2nd=11.7 3rd=13.9
My current ITM is 41.7% and the ROI is 19.6%

Brian then posed the following:
"Good stuff, but one thing I might suggest is that you worry a little bit less about your day to day results."

hmmm... I'm not. I would consider this blog to be of the "diary" variety as opposed to a "strategy" one. If you look back through the archives to the beginning of this blog you would see that I often posted daily results in the beginning. Since I've made a point out of starting over with my bankroll and "beginning again", I've decided to follow in the same vein and try to post a "diary" of the play on a daily basis.

I can see how this might be misconstrued as results oriented. I will admit that after a brutal day of losses it is difficult to look at the big picture, but I've been around long enough to know that it's the cumulative that matters, not the immediate.

Well that's it. Go read one of the guys I mentioned above. Go on. Scram. Git. Scidaddle.