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Archive for November, 2009

Weekend’s Over

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Failed to cash in any of the weekend MTTs. Shouldn’t be too surprised as the fields for both were massive!

The 5k freeroll I went out about 9000th – playing a few hands which all missed on flop + failed to get a cbet fold tends to cripple your stack, followed by the inevitable shove as the blinds begin to bite. I saw S1ndr0me hold on a bit longer as he doubled up at some point, but later even he succumbed to a AJ vs A9 seeing a 9 on the flop. Bit of a waste of time really anyway – you have to beat thousands of others just to cash $10? What’s the point…

The Turbo Takedown is similar, but at least the cash is better. I had poor hands throughout, although at least this time I did build my stack a bit. However again the blinds were ferocious and eventually I failed to stay in. I was tantalizingly close to the money – from a field of twenty-two thousand people (!!!), only 6900 were left and 5oooth place paid $78. But beating 15,000 other idiots wasn’t enough and I was left empty handed. Yegor railed me throughout (nothing better to do, really?) and said that I needed to have built a stronger stack and taken more risks. He’s right, but I was feeling a bit risk averse unfortunately.

So, no new update to November’s results. Might play tonight, but whatever.

Plans for December? I’ve decided that all my plotting and calculations on what’s the best rakeback etc is all a bit pointless when done in a vacuum. What I really need to do is actually put my money where my mouth is and test it out.

So I’m going to split my bankroll equally between Pokerstars, Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet. I’ll switch my sessions equally between the three and see how it goes (I’ll try to match it so that by the end of the month I’ll have roughly the same number of hands at each site). At the end of the month(s) I’ll also factor in Rakeback and bonuses into my winnings and see which site comes out on top. I probably should add in Titan, but I don’t want to spread the BR that thin on any one site.

This hopefully will factor in things such as the ‘softness’ of the sites, table selection etc, and see if it’s true that if the players on Ultimate Bet are that much worse than Full Tilt, then it should show a better winrate from that site.

November Results

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

A day or two early, but I’ll update tomorrow night if I get a result. I wanted to post today partly because it’s been a great month and I just wanted to brag, but I’ve also hit the milestone of 100k hands. To have played 100k hands is pretty awesome, but the results aren’t so hot so I’ll talk about November’s results first :-)

Results from cash games has been ok, mainly because I’ve moved back to NL10;

Nov09

Those nasty sharp swings in the middle was my experiment at shortstacking NL50 to see how quickly I could clear a bonus. I was lucky to get away with only a mild loss of $14 and it was clearly not a good idea to push a bonus outside your bankroll. The 2nd half of that chart is NL10, and the monetary boost is clear to see. Still very swingy though – I half wish I had a more consistent style, but on the other hand rollercoasters are a lot more fun.

The big result was the $2 180man tourney win which boosted the bankroll by $70, giving a total  of $100 wins in tournament results.

Bonuses came to $20 (Full Tilt holiday bonus – hopefully I’ll clear at least another $20 before it expires), and about $18 in rakeback. So final total of $180 for November – a huge boost to the bankroll and long overdue. Tomorrow I’ve those MTTs as well, and just getting to the cash in the Turbo Takedown will be about $70, so as long as I can get a result I’ll be happy. I’m not holding my breath though, my tournament success is random at best.

So, on to the big lifetime result;

100kHands

Quite disapointing to have been playing poker for so long and not really getting the hang of nanostakes. I think I’m back on track again, and my NL10 progress should be similar to that early rise (perhaps not so steep – it was a heater on the whole). I’m confident that from now on it’s just a matter of time & grinding to get to NL25 & NL50.

Also the chart doesn’t really reflect my true bankroll – it doesn’t include tournament results, bonuses or Rakeback – plus it only goes back to July 2008, and I’ve played longer than that. In reality I’ve probably redeposited about 4 times ($250 or so), then that heater after which I cashed out $170, and then from $30 (donated by S1ndr0me and Yegor!) rebuilt my account to $330. I suspect that means I’m actually in the black when it comes to true lifetime poker results, but I’ve no proof…

All Set for MTT Weekend

Friday, November 27th, 2009

A little while ago I completed a survey for Pokerstars and got entered into a 5k freeroll. The freeroll is this Sunday so it’s been a bit of a wait.

PokerStars is also doing its Turbo Takedown tournament (had it stopped for a while, or have I just lost touch?), so I figured if I’m going to be playing a freeroll I ought to have a go at getting into the TT which is playing at roughly the same time.

I haven’t touched my PokerStars account for a little while so wasn’t sure how many FPPs were there (it’s 3000 FPPs to enter) – turns out I had 1350 left.

I entered two satellites, one for 300FPP and the other for 500FPPs. The first only got 18 players, so there was just one seat to the winner and 2400FPP to 2nd place. I had a crazy run of luck and several times ended up all-in as the underdog only to draw to a straight (so weird, I never hit straights in my cash games!) – I ended up HU but then went out on a AK (me) against 44.

I checked the cashier – the 2nd prize FPPs had put me within 50FPP of the buy-in for the TT! I quickly opened the lobby for the 2nd satellite so I could unregister and just as I did this it started! FML, I’ll just have to win the stupid thing…

This one had 27 entries so it was a bit better with 4 seats for the TT, and the 5th place got 2500 FPP. So all I needed was the 5th place really.

I quickly became chipleader, and held on to that until we were down to 10 players. The blinds started to erode my stack and the others had doubled up on each other so I began to have a tough time staying in the game, sinking down to 6 place. Patience and a few careful raises got me to the final 5, although it was a bit touch and go at some points. I figured I wasn’t bothered about carrying on since I had enough FPPs and so just shoved any ol’ hand (happend to be A3o), got called and went out.

So I got my 3000 FPP and registered for the Turbo Takedown. Remaining FPPs = 2450, profit of 1k points :-) If I’d carried on to get 4th or better in that last sat then the FPP profit would have been just 50 more, so it really wasn’t worth staying in (and besides that meant I didn’t take one of the seats from the other guys – and that kind of karma is *definitely* going to make all the difference on Sunday!)

All I’ve got to do now is get in the money on both those tourneys on Sunday…

+++ Full Tilt Has Decided to Combat Shortstacking +++

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Kind of newsflash. but not much of one. Full Tilt has decided to do something about the shortstacker situation, but won’t tell us what it is. However whatever it is will happen before the end of the year.

Perhaps they’ve got the wrong end of the stick and will create a Shortstacker Bonus promotion…

More news: Durrrr has started blogging; http://www.durrrr.com/blog or at least that’s one way of describing a single post saying hiya (filed under ‘Poker’). Apparently he doesn’t even type it in himself but has an assistant do it. But then, don’t we all…

Identify Theft

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

I was just reading 2p2 and suddenly came face to face with one of my results graph – someone was trying to pass it off as theirs!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32/beginners-questions/hints-improve-playing-poker-641728/

Too bizarre – why would someone do that?  When I first clicked on the pic I think a link to Full Tilt popped up but I’m not totally sure (it might have been open already as I had been checking my promotions earlier), so maybe it’s a troll trying to get referral links, but otherwise wtf?

Following Isildur1

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

I dunno how many people are following Isildur1′s high stakes antics – it’s a bit like motorway pile-up rubbernecking, totally sick but you can’t help but watch.

Anyway, wouldn’t normally post about it, but I saw a comment that made me lol;

‘doubt he’s swedish, its prob just to throw people off, but he is a serious player, how can someone play 7 tables at once????? max i can handle is 4/5…..and thats play money, he’s playing for $MILLION$’s’

Level? I really hope not :-)

Putting in the Hands

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

I’m waking up early again for some reason, so might as well put it to some use and get some hands in. It’s not going too badly – yesterday was breakeven (prob my fault), today was better although still a few problems. This was the very first hand dealt to me today;

$0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
6 Players

Stacks:
UTG ($5.07)
UTG+1 ($9.80)
CO ($6.99)
BTN ($5.64)
SB ($10.60)
Hero ($10)

Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is BB Kdiamonds poker card Kclubs poker card
UTG calls $0.10, 1 fold, CO raises to $0.45, 2 folds, Hero raises to $1.80, UTG folds, CO calls $1.35

Flop: Aclubs poker card 3diamonds poker card 5spades poker card ($3.75, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $2.20, Hero calls $2.20

Turn: 7diamonds poker card ($8.15, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $1, Hero calls $1

River: 2hearts poker card ($10.15, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.80, Hero calls $0.80

Final Pot: $11.75
Hero shows
Kdiamonds poker card Kclubs poker card
CO shows a pair of Aces
9hearts poker card Adiamonds poker card

CO wins $10.97 (net +$5.17)

Hero lost $5.80
UTG lost $0.10

I just couldn’t put those kings down. I probably should have cbet on the flop, but as soon as he put that raise out I felt sure I was beat. He then kept putting out little bets that I couldn’t fold to, even though it was so obvious I was beat! Duh…

Anyway, results of session were good – very solid redline, although a lot of it was from made hands that I didn’t want them to fold to, so could’ve been better if they’d been worse :-)

24Nov09


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