All A Twitter

I have to withdrawl $250-$300 from my bankroll today to cover some unforeseen expenditures. I'm not sure where that is going to leave me but I'll have a little bit of bankroll left. I'll update more on it tomorrow.

In the mean time I've set up a twitter account. This will allow me to do the things I've wanted to do but don't have the time for on this blog. Think of it as microblogging with the cellphone. This will be little blurbs or thoughts that I have that don't require the thought of a full blog post here. Check out my profile page and join my followers list if your interested.

If you have a twitter page let me know so I can join yours.

A Good Day

After taking yesterday off from the felt I waded through 16 SNG's today. I'm really liking these turbo's. I wish I would have tried them earlier. Now that I've written that you can expect horror stories to follow in the next few days.

Today's ROI: 29.8%
Bankroll: $411.84

Count The Ways

Let's see... I spent $34.80 to win one $26 token and then couldn't convert it into anything. Then I spent $8 on a $1 rebuy tourney and was kicking ass and approaching the money when the only player that could bust me at the table did. (AA vs. flopped set)

To finish up the day I played 5 $6.50 SNG's and managed a 99.4% ROI. If only that was possible over 500 of them.

Bankroll: $387.34

Quick Note

I have played virtually no poker since Sunday. I decided to try out the 10 day demo for World of Warcraft and I can report that it's just as addictive as you've heard. I can easily see how people have lost themselves in the game. The quests are quick and you can always look forward to the next challenge. If you could get paid for killing beasts... it could be the next poker.

Speaking of poker, I'm getting back in the saddle today. I'm going to try to collect a few tokens and play a few tourneys. Nothing to involved but I'd like to play in the Big Game tomorrow night so I need to token my way in.

After some more ad money and rakeback payment my bankroll sits at: $397.84

Eleven In A Row

Eleven in a row. That would be the number of SNG's that I consecutively did not cash in today. I then had two firsts and a second to end the day with fourteen played and an ROI of -22.9%. Use yesterday SNG's and I went sixteen without a cash. That's got to be close to the worst streak I've ever had.

I've got the Anti-Midas touch.

Bankroll: $223.16

Best Article In A Long Time

This is by far the best article on poker that I have read in a long time. It rings especially true for me considering my last few months. Go read it.

A Magical Mind

Progress

Stayed away from cash games entirely today and it makes me wonder why I even bother with them. I've been so fixated on maintaining my iron man status at Full Tilt I've let my play suffer. I had to grind out the hours... get the points.

So I took a break today and played nothing but SNG's and a Razz Tourney. Finished very well in my 10 $6.50 turbo SNG's managing a 24.6% ROI. Played a $1 45 man SNG and final tabled but was bad beated out in 8th. Used my token today to try for a $75 token but went out ninth. The Razz tourney went poorly as I finished 30/49.

Bankroll: $238.66

Disaster

Wow...Wow...Wow

Words can't describe the depths to which I fell today. The reraises I saw with nothing but flush draws on the turn (which hit of course), the calling down with Ace high (which hit of course), gutshots, open enders, you name it, they chased it (and hit of course).

At this rate I'll be broke in two more days. Game over. Thanks for playing.

One turbo SNG played for a fourth place finish. 583 hands of shorthanded .5/1 played for -$105.45. My only profit was a $50 payment received for an ad.

Bankroll left: $229.41

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tighten up, or loosen up at these small shorthanded tables. The big winners I've tracked seem to be suckout artists at this point. Perhaps just SNG play and some forum research on these shorthanded tables will be in order for tomorrow.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

How Many times have you said that? We all have. If we could just go back in time, things would be different.

Over the last few days I've been looking at my poker game in those terms. Could I start over and have even greater success? I looked back at my very first blog post and saw that when I started this blog I had a bankroll of $300. I managed to build that up to a nice sum over the years and I wonder if I could do it all again. Just start over.

The state of online poker is still largely uncertain and I want to challenge and enjoy myself while the ride still lasts. With that in mind I have emptied my poker accounts and left myself with $292.11 (and a $26 Full Tilt token). Not quite exactly $300 but with the odd amounts I had sitting in a few sites that's what was left after making withdrawals.

Things will certainly be different this time. Jumping to new sites to take advantage of bonus opportunities are no more. I do have pending bonus money at Absolute and UB due to reloads that are there. I also have the rakeback with Full Tilt now and a small amount from blog advertising. I can also trade in my iron man points for tokens or bonus money if I choose to so all that should offset the bonus whoring. It's probably even more than the bonus whoring yielded way back when.

So what's the gameplan? How will I use the money? For grinding out the Full Tilt iron man points I'm going to make .50/1 limit short-handed my grinding game. That allows me to play within the 300BB bankroll guideline. It does leave me a little thin playing 4 tables at once if I have a bad day on all tables at once. I should be ok with it though. For SNG's I'm going to follow a 45:1 guidline and for MTT's a 40:1 limit. That means with the current bankroll I'm at $6.50 for SNG's and $7.00 for MTT buy-ins. I'll try to collect tokens to play in higher buyins when I can.

Well that's it. Let's see what the future holds.

PPA Commercial

I think a better commercial could have been produced, but it's a step in the right direction.

Swap

I have $25 on Poker.com that I can't get access to since I don't have a click2pay account. I am looking for someone willing to accept a $25 transfer from me on Poker.com in return for a $25 transfer on Full Tilt. If you can help me out, and I know of you (ie. a fellow blogger) please email me at (lifesagrind at gmail dot com).

T.G.F.O.

Thank God February's Over

For everything I gained in January, February wiped it off the map and then some. I played 15,635 hands of NL Holdem and managed a loss of 4.47BB/100. For the life of me I can't figure out what my issue is with the NL cash game. If someone out there was willing to help me out I'd be willing to listen.

Playing 1,000 hands a day really did lead to a grinding mentality. I played at times I really would have rather been doing something else and I missed the tournament action. I can play limit holdem and get my 200 full tilt points in fewer hands so I might give that a shot.

I'm going to enjoy today and maybe things will be clearer tomorrow.

ePassporte To America

The recent and well covered turmoil regarding online funding has left many poker players in a quandary. When the news first broke and neteller pulled out of the US market I researched my options and decided on Click2Pay as my payment processor of choice. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I complete my sign up they decide to leave the market.

Left with only one viable alternative I sign up for ePassporte. I wasn't looking forward to the fees but beggars can't be choosers. I was however pleasantly suprised over what I've discovered so far.

The current landscape is very rocky for payment processors and last thing I want is to have my money tied up in someone else's bank account. There is no guarantee that the money is any safer with the online poker rooms but fool me once, yada, yada, yada.

My current plan is to leave my bankroll with the rooms and only use the processor if I have to transfer money between sites, or I'm ready to make a withdrawal. To facilitate the withdrawal portion of my transactions I decided to get a physical visa/atm card from ePassporte.

The fees mentioned on their site left some room for interpretation so I set out to lock in what I'm in for. The whole process begins with the sign up which was not without its snags. I decided to fund my account with my visa check card. This should have, and to be honest would have been painless If I hadn't messed things up. I originally was going to deposit $300 in the account and when I clicked on the accept button to move onto the next screen, the "Verified by Visa" screen came up. At this stage I decided I didn't want to put $300 in the account. I felt better with only $100 to start with so I clicked the back button on the browser and reentered the smaller amount. I was again presented with the "Verified by Visa" screen but lo and behold Visa wouldn't verify. A quick call to the fraud prevention section of Visa and I was able to complete the transaction. Turns out by navigating away and back again with different amounts throws up red flags and my account was locked.

My account was now funded with $95. Ninety-five you ask? Didn't I deposit $100? Why yes I did but here we encounter our first fee. Five dollars for every one hundred deposited is removed as a funding fee when using a credit card. The fee for depositing with a checking account is $2 but I didn't want to wait the two weeks for my account to be verified before depositing. (My checking account has since been verified so I can use this method if I so chose in the future.)

When the account was established I was issued a "virtual" visa number that could be used for online purchases at any retailer that accepts visa. Since my Verizon bill was due I decided to test out this feature and was able to make the payment with ease, and without any fees.

Depositing to Full Tilt, PokerStars, Absolute, and UltimateBet went without a hitch. Again no fees. Full Tilt claimed there would be some fee involved with the deposit but I've deposited twice and have not paid any.

Withdrawals worked from all sites without any fees as well. From Full Tilt the withdrawal took about two hours while Absolute and Ultimatebet took closer to twelve.

Getting my money out in a timely fashion was very important so I paid the $35 fee to aquire a physical visa card to use in stores and at ATM's. The card arrived after about 2 weeks and I headed to an ATM to make a withdrawal. The ATM machine charged me a $2 fee for the withdrawal but I would have had that fee even with my checking account ATM card. ePassporte claimed on their site that there would be a $2 fee to use the ATM function of the card but I was not charged this. I then took my card to a store and made a purchase. Worked fine and no fees from ePassporte.

Overall I've been very happy with the experience. I've had to pay much less in transaction fees than I had anticipated and I'd recommend ePassporte if your still undecided on which way to go.

“The best things in life are free
But you can give them to the birds and bees.
I want money, that’s what I want.”

--Barrett Strong

If Mr. Strong plays online poker, he might be surprised to find out that he can get both free things and money quite easily. All he would have to do is join Poker Source Online.

Poker Source Online (PSO) will actually pay you to play online poker. Sure, you can go directly to the online poker rooms’ sites and get their traditional deposit bonuses, but if you sign up through PSO, you will get those same bonuses (sometimes better ones), PLUS free gifts or free money. And all you have to do is play some poker.

PSO’s 100 percent, zero risk option is its free money promotion, where PSO will actually give you money to start playing. You will not need to deposit a single, solitary penny. The only money you stand to lose is PSO’s. Thousands upon thousands of players have taken advantage of this promotion already, receiving a total of well over a million dollars in free poker money.

But if you already have your poker bankroll ready to go, a better deal for you would be to sign up for one of PSO’s free gift promotions. Poker Source Online created the original poker promotion back in 2004 by giving away poker books and poker chip sets, and now there are even more gifts from which to choose. Poker table tops, Copag cards, Poker Tracker software, and a wide array of gift cards are yours for the choosing if you create an online poker account through PSO, make a minimum deposit, and complete the play-through requirements. And if you aren’t sure exactly what gift you want, just choose “PSO Points” as your gift and spend them later in PSO’s store.

And then, for those of you who are set with your bankroll and have all the poker gear you need, you can still get good, old money from PSO in the form of rakeback. Again, sign up for one of PSO’s rakeback rooms, and instead of paying the full portion of rake hand after hand after hand, you will get a chunk of that back at least once a month. Use it to build your bankroll or treat yourself to something special, it’s up to you. It’s your money.

The best things in life are really free. Get them all at Poker Source Online.

Third Century And A Rework

Netellers holding of funds is causing me to change my online play. More on that later but first I'll do my 300 SNG update.

The last 100 SNG's have really been a heartbreaker for me. I went from having my single biggest day ever (14 tables = 70.5% ROI) followed immediately by my worst day ever (13 tables = -74.8% ROI). Sadly the losing day was bigger than the winning. Overall I was about break even over this span of tourneys.

Here are the numbers:
Ran: 325
ROI: -2.5%
ITM: 36.6%
Profit: -$149

As you can see I can't seem to get a break out on the ROI and my ITM has gone flat.


It looks like I can finish in any position at any given time. That is except for sixth. I'm having trouble getting over that hump. The players have gotten very tight and it's getting harder to wait them out sometimes. I know that means I should get more aggressive when we get down to six players but that doesn't seem to be helping. My opponents don't seem to want to be first in without a big hand, yet they are willing to call you with just about anything. Very odd and very confusing/frustrating.


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Now onto other news.

Having the same problem as most other online players my bankroll is now depleted due to Netellers stranglehold on my funds. This leaves me in a bit of a quandry with how to proceed from here on out in regards to game selection. Initially I was just going to keep playing what I always did and just hope I hit a winning streak. This has led to a $339 loss so far just this week and I simply can't sustain that. I'm unwilling to add funds online so instead I have to start practicing tighter bankroll management.

The first issue to address in my SNG play. With the funds I have left online I'm only funded to realistically play the $10 SNG's. This isn't a problem unto itself since I've been struggling at the $20 level and been profitable at the $10 level. The problem arises with the accumulation of Full Tilt points. I've begun collecting 200 points a day and I want to continue that so I can take advantage of the monthly freerolls available through the Iron Man Challenge. Playing $10 SNG's I'd have to play 30 a day and that's just not possible.

MTT's are still my most profitable option but again, the bankroll is not where it needs to be. I'm going to try to play the 2pm $26 double stack 11K Guarantee a few times a week but I'm going to have to cut out buying into the $75 tourneys. I'll try to play a couple of the Token Turbo SNG's to accumulate $26 tokens and try to parlay them into $75 tokens. MTT's might be my most profitable option but it still doesn't solve the 200 point threshold I want to maintain.

That brings me to cash games. I've been a sucker for the cash games in the past and I've bled money in the process. This is the way to go though if I want to accumulate the necessary points on a daily basis. Over the last two days I've experimented in a little risk/reward as far as cash games are concerned and I've come up with the following. In order to protect my bankroll I've decided to 4 table the 25NL tables on Full Tilt. If I can do this for four hours a day I can reach the 200 points. That comes out to around 800-1,000 hands a day. My rakeback should increase because of this as well so hopefully I can get my bankroll back in shape within the next month or so.

That pretty much sums it up. Cash games and a few tourneys are the short term future for me.

February Goals

First lets do a little review of the January goals.

1) Qualify for Gold status Iron Man on Full Tilt: SUCCESS - I didn't make it until the last day of the month, but I made it.

2) Get my SNG ROI to at least 10% playing $10 and maybe $20 SNG's: FAILURE - Started hot, ran cold, then warmed up to finish the month with 267 played for a 3.38% ROI.

Now a look into the future.

1) Qualify for Gold status Iron Man on Full Tilt

I really debated going for the gusto and making Iron level but if I did that I wouldn't have enough time left in the day to play any MTT's. I'm actually still waffling with this so I won't commit to Iron but I may try for it anyway.

2) Get my SNG ROI up to 10%

In order to make it worth my while I'm going to need to get there. Also the cash game bug is biting me again so I need to make the SNG's worth it right now.

3) Play in at least two 300K Guarantee tournaments on Full Tilt

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In December I finished in 249th place on the SNG leaderboard. For January I ended up in 195th place. If I decide to shoot for the Iron level this month I'm fairly confident I can make the top 100. I'm not going to make this a goal though because I'm still undecided on my approach this month.

Poker Gods Spit On Me To Teach Me A Lesson

So after looking forward to the WPBT event tonight I decide to donk off all my chips after only about 2o minutes of play. I tried to outbully a player that held pocket Queens. Not too brite. I wasn't paying attention to the tournament though. And at the time I didn't mind giving away my chips.

Why you ask. Because I was doing very well in the 300K on Full Tilt, that's why. Shortly after the tournament started I doubled up when my quads beat the nut flush. From that point on I managed to stay about twice the average stack until deep into hour three. The competition either got a lot better or my cards got much worse but with about 20 spots to the money I was down to an average stack.

After getting endless amounts of crap and having all my steals played back at I finally found AK in the big blind. It folds around to the small blind who pushes all in. I have him covered by a little over 3,000 chips. So far the few times it's been folded around he has pushed all in. I know he doesn't have a hand here so I make the call. I hit trip A's but the other three cards are 10,9,8 to give his J7 the straight.

I'm devastated. I'm left with 3,000 and the blinds are 500-1,000. I'm royally screwed now. I check the tourney info and I'm now in 304th place with 310 left. I know I have to get chips quickly now because the money starts at 301 and that's all I can play for at this point. Two hands later I pick up JJ and am called by KQ. A King hits the flop and I'm out in 307th.

Looking at the tourney window I see that the money didn't start at 301. It started at 306. I went out on the bubble when I could have at least salvaged my buyin by folding that one hand. You see the game froze when I was eliminated so it could finish all the tables. When play resumed they were down to 305. That's twice now I've cost myself by not taking a moment to look at the tourney window and figure out what's going on.

Hopefully I've learned that lesson.

P.S. Yes I know playing the pussy at the bubble is bad. But considering what I had left that was all I could play for unless I got extremely lucky.

Called Out

I haven't played in a blogger sponsored tournament in quite some time. In fact I don't remember the last one I played in but it was probably in October some time. I really haven't had any plans to play in any in the near future but then I was alerted to this. Miami Don has posted the odds on the 2007 WPBT season and I found myself listed at 10:1.

Now I feel compelled to prove his prognostication as either correct or incorrect. (Incorrect meaning I should have had even lower odds. :) ) So you'll find me at the inaugural event planned for this Sunday night.

In other news the SNG's have started tracking upward again and I have successfully satellited into the FTOPS event #1 after three attempts. I have also played in one qualifier to multiple events but was busted near the bubble when I ran into a cooler.

On a personal note my son's pinewood derby race is Saturday night and we've built our fastest car ever. We're shooting for the win this year so wish us luck.

2nd Century

Things haven't gone as well with the 2nd 100 as it did with the first. I decided to play the $20 SNG's during the last 100 and I've managed to give back my previous winnings and then some. My ITM% has dropped down and with it went the profits. I'm not getting the wins anymore and my 4th place finishes have increased dramatically. It's a small sample size in the great scheme of things and I really won't get a good overall look at my play until I get to around the 500 mark.

Here are the numbers:
Ran: 202
ROI: -4.1%
ITM: 36.1%
Profit: -$136

The graphs tell the tale. My finishes have started to level out across the board and that's never a good thing.



In other news I have slowed down my SNG play to pick up a few MTT's. In the last week I played in seven tourney's and had nice results. I finished 11th in a Full Tilt 11K Guarantee DS, final tabled a $20 Razz tourney on Full Tilt, and final tabled a 2K Guarantee on UltimateBet. Add another lower money finish in an 11K DS and I monied 4 out of 7. Not too shabby.

I'm also going to start a Heads Up SNG challenge. I'm going to take $52.50, which translates to 10 buyins at the $5 heads up level, and play on that. I'll move up when I have 10 buyins for the next level, and drop down when I have lost 10 buyins. Should be fun and give me valuable info at the same time.

Pain In The Ass

The previous pullouts of the US by poker rooms really didn't have much of an effect on me. The only real loss was Paradise's tournaments and I didn't play on Party much anyway. But now, with Neteller pulling out, that really bites the big one.

It looks like the choices being touted by the poker rooms as replacements are epassporte and click2pay. After doing a little research I've decided to go with click2pay as my new funding choice. I don't like fees and epassporte is all about laying on the fees. With click2pay I can set it up to work like I did with Neteller and live fee free.

Easy choice.