So I had a look at the tourneys to see what was happening, and a $3 180man rebuy was about to fill so I jumped in. Figured it’d be good for something to do while the Grand Prix was on.

While waiting for it to start I filtered my HEM onto MTTs that were 180 entrants or more, and was amazed to see that out of the dozen or so I’d played I’d cashed in 30%! They were almost all $2 games, usually all for the same reason I’d entered this $3 game (killing time basically). None of them had cashed that high, but it was almost $100 profit, which is pretty sweet for $2 games (ok, not that sweet considering they were MTTs, but it’s still a nice ROI of 180%).

Since this $3 game was a rebuy obviously the first 30 minutes was a ridiculous shovefest. I kinda stayed out of it until the last minute and put a few of my own shoves in before getting the add-on (didn’t go my way of course, so started after the break with what the minimum – or should be the minimum, it’s surprising how many people didn’t rebuy or add-on though, so really I wasn’t in bad shape). It occured to me that rebuys make for a low rake game – I’d always steered clear of them, but it makes sense to me now.

I had a reasonable run and moved up to roughly top third of stacks, then did this;

Insane, or genius read? Figured there were far more bluffs in his range than actually hitting that king (um, didn’t really consider the possibility of PPs though, which was a mistake really). Really I should have played it as a stop and go, and donk-shoved the flop (I’m not that brave though).

Anyway, that put me as chipleader. I maintained it more or less until we were ITM. It then faded a bit and I finally go to the final table as the middle stack – even though many of us were still reasonably deep (kinda, M’s > 8 at least) the play was very aggressive and I hadn’t anything that stood up in even a small way.

I tried one raise from the CO which got shoved on and I folded. I was then down to an M of 3 and this happened;

so I went out as 9th with a little win of $29. So frustrating when the big prize of $500 was only 8 seats away and I’d just beat 171 other people to get there. I then kicked myself even harder when I realised the SB would be totally fucked after paying the BB and if I’d only waited another orbit I’d have doubled my prize (in my dreams maybe, much more likely is that the little shit would have doubled up).

$50 entry fee, so that makes the most expensive tournament I’ve ever paid for. I considered some of the satellites, but I’d probably take several attempts and be wasting the money and time anyway. If I can pay S1ndr0me $50 in a stupid prop bet, then I can pay it for a tournament where I might do ok. The main downside is that it’s another Sunday late nighter, but what can you do. This time I won’t down a bottle of wine before starting though, so that might help.

Which reminds me – the $215 SCOOP ticket I won on that WBCOOP tourney is getting closer to being spent. Pokerstars has released the schedule for it now, although the heads up tournaments don’t have any $215 buy-ins -the closest are $162 and $270 entries. Can I split my ticket? I need to write to support to find out (now that I’m thinking about it I’ll do it now!). If I can’t split it I’ll have to use it on a regular FR tournament which I suck at. Stupid non-transferrable, non-cashable tickets…

Sure, he loves his poker alright – but has he ever run around spilling his piss bottle around the room and then taken a victory swig? No sir, I bet he hasn’t…

Bit of a bingo game going on…

On the brighter side I had a go at at HU SNG’s as recommended by Yegor. Technically I’m rolled for $10 games, but I tried out the $5 ones first just to get my toes wet.

So far, won 7, lost 1 Profitz of $28

Obviously I’m very pleased with that. I’m also pleased with the way I played – the wins were ‘real’ wins rather than suckouts, although I did hit some very nice hands along the way. Best of all was the feeling of crushing the life out of my opponents. I suspect HU could be a very ego inflating game

Update: survived my first desperate shove Q8 vs AK, fortunately hitting a Q… Still an M of about 4, so not looking so hot

Update II: Hooray, survived 2nd shove. M maybe 5 or 6? Can never work these things out on the fly…

Update III: And another! Ok, M is 8 now, back in the game… Still way down the field, about 530th out of 880 (ITM is 150 places)

Update IV: Won a reasonable pot – M of 10, although stack is still only 3/4 of the average. Lots of action on the table still – crazy crazy people…

(forget the Update xx crap). Another couple of nice pots. Now have an above average stack, M = 21 & 296/716…

How’s this for value betting

Unfortunately threw it away a few hands later. M down to 13. 300th out of 530

Damn, just lost half my stack to a draw that failed. Villain had AK on the button – smooth called pre. Looks like he got more value out of it that way for sure (needed an idiot like me to do it)

Ahh, got a set of tens. Didn’t get a complete double up out of it though, wasn’t sure how to play it – two tone flop & I’m always paranoid of those things. More than I should be…. 356th out of 411. Still not great…

AK hits on the flop but I’m left with PSB for my whole stack so I go ahead and push. Villains (2 of ‘em) fold. M now 7. 270th out of 380. Stack about 1/2 average. Maybe should have eeked more value out, but again two tone flop – I’m such a chicken!

Crap! Mess up with the same villain who smooth called earlier with AK. And he had AK again!!! And he smooth called pre with them again!!!!! (exclamation mark overdose…)

I’m left with about one orbit of blinds & antes left, so shove my K8 suited. Fortunately half the table calls. My K8 hits a K on the flop, holds up and I’m back to where I was before I messed up against AK doofus. Not that that says much… M is 3, I’m 325 out of 343. Things are looking grim as we go into the second break.

Oh well, with M of 3 I shoved ATs, got called by 77 and didn’t hit on the flop. 339th from 1740 runners.

I’ve registered for the main event on Sunday. Hopefully that’ll go better. Is it worth blogging like this while it’s on (like some idiot twatter)? If this was even vaguely interesting tell me and I’ll announce my hole cards throughout the main event (yeah, right).

The games are at 17:00 ET. It really annoys me that they state times as ET – what is that? There isn’t an ET timezone – there’s EST for east coast USA (or eastern australia), CET for central europe, EET is east europe. I guess they mean east coast States – typical American internet myopia (which also means a crappy 10pm starting time).

None of the following text is mine, the sneaky buggers have managed to get a bunch of links from this. Oh well, $60k freeroll is good enough I guess.

I think the differences between the session where the aggro worked and the one where I spewed were;

a) First session I’d already played for a while, and hadn’t shown myself to be anything out of the ordinary, while the second session I sat down and started firing away. Any idiot could put down as a aggrotard, and this is what happened (my check-raise was reraised every time just about).
b) I picked my spots more carefully the first time. I had got to know the players at the tables, and was able to pick and choose when to push harder. The second session I’d just started, and was basically trying to bully complete unknowns.
c) The second session I didn’t back down. I often continued against those players who pushed back at my 3bets. Consequently I ran into AA several times quite quickly. At one point I had to three barrel bluff, and the final river push finally made the guy fold, but how stupid is that! It worked once, but I don’t think it was a profitable thing to do…

So anyway, 2010 I will stop being an idiot. I’m still bankrolled for nl10, but only 10 buy-ins above the move down point – if I don’t even out I’ll be back at NL5 by February. However, you’ve got to experiment with your game I believe, so I don’t feel too bad (it’s not as if I’m going to turn pro any time soon).

Ok, onto the 2009 review;

Cash:

Tourney:

Well, it’s in the black! (the $40 lost yesterday was 2010, so close thing to ruining the year’s results, lol).

The New Year, 2009
This time last year I’d dropped right down to NL2 – most of my game up to that point had been NL10 at Full Tilt (which was their lowest stakes at that time), and it hadn’t been going very well. So I moved to Pokerstars and dropped down, first to NL5 and then to NL2 as I continued to lose.

The Redeposit – April
In April I finally lost my entire account. I redeposited, and for some reason known only to myself at the time I went back to NL10. I then had a massive heater, gaining $350 in 20k hands. How that happened I’ve no idea! I should go back and look at those hands in detail, but as far as I can remember I was very very lucky – PokerTracker all-in performance says $120 over expected value at its peak.

The Cash Out – July
Inevitably the heater ran out, and I lost a bunch of $$$ pretty quickly. I think I’d upped the number of tables I was playing, plus overconfidence, and that led to much spewage. As it came crashing down a personal credit card problem suddenly arose and I had to withdraw my entire roll to pay for it. In hindsight this was actually a useful thing to happen to me. Firstly, it showed the kindness of friends as they immediately transferred to me a little bit of spare cash to keep playing. Secondly it made me decide to follow bankroll management properly. Up until that point I’d play NL10 if I had over $100 in my account (or over only $50 sometimes). Starting from $30 with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to redeposit in the next couple of months really made sure I did the right thing to avoid going busto again.

The Grind
So I returned to NL2 again. This time my game was much stronger and I rapidly built up enough to move to NL5. I carried on playing well and clipped $200 to move into NL10. I then lost a few buy-ins, and moved back down. Ground up, bust down. I did this 3 times (the three peaks at 41k, 51k and 65k hands). I suddenly realised I was doing the bankroll management slightly wrong – I had a single threshold of $200 where I moved either up or down. What I needed to do was set the move-up threshold higher than the move down one (ie $250 to move up, $200 to move down). This way I’d have a 5 buy-in margin to lose before having to move down.

The Donkament Win – November
I was within $20 of the $250 threshold, and it was taking ages (it says $60 on that graph, but I was also getting rakeback and bonuses which aren’t shown on the graph). It was November now, and I seemed to be on the most miserable downswing ever – no big spews, but not a single +ve session for ages and ages. Then one Sunday I was messing around playing some MTTs (as you can see from the graph above, I don’t tourney much), and suddenly went deep in a $2 180 man SNG. I walked away with $70 – I was finally in NL10 territory again.

The Final Fall
I seemed to be playing well and built my roll up to $450. It didn’t feel like a heater this time, and I felt confident that I was winning appropriate hands rather than sucking out. I decided to look closer at rakeback and see which site was the best for me, and so I split my roll amongst 4 sites – Full Tilt, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet and Party Poker. The difference between the sites was amazing – at NL10 UB and PP was full of limpers who’d try to see every street, while FT and PS still had its usual compliment of 2p2 players. Despite this I’ve failed to profit from them, and even worse seemed to have spewed a ton of money.

Final Roundup
So what’s the roundup of the year? I have to be honest with myself and say I’m not very good at poker. Almost 100k hands, and still being buffeted around by variance and barely keeping above the rake. In fact since my chart shows only +$44 profit, it’s obvious my entire roll ($350 at end of 2009) is made entirely of rakeback and bonuses.

Is that a big problem? I guess not as I still enjoy playing. I still enjoy the challenge of learning a game where it’s clear that gaining knowledge and experience will lift you through the ranks. The frustration is coming from seeing the stakes I play as a goal in itself.

So my resolution for 2010 is to let go of the idea that I’m not a winning player if I can’t ascend rapidly up the stakes. I will play poker at the stakes my bankroll allows, and concentrate on being the best player I can for those stakes. I guess ascending graphs of $$$ won will show whether I’m succeeding, although for me it’ll be how I achieved it that’ll be more important…

So I’ve started to get twitchy about my bankroll and being at NL10 and not really moving forward very quickly. That sounds kinda stupid since it was only June that I cashed out and started again from $30 – it’s not as if I’m heading in the wrong direction!

I think the thing is that it feels like I’ve been playing NL10 forever – I started out playing online poker a little bit more than two years now and where I was playing had NL10 minimum. I would play, lose, redeposit etc, but didn’t really know what I was doing. I found 2p2, starting raising preflop more, and started losing even more. Fortunately I moved to Pokerstars where I switched to NL5, although continued to spew horrendously (losing 40 buy-ins! Check my lifetime chart – that’s the slightly smoother crash at about 12k hands). I moved to NL2, fixed some major leaks (ie learnt to fold), and started rebuilding.

So I’m feeling confined by NL10 – I’ll tempt fate by saying I’m not here because I can’t play any better, but merely tethered by my bankroll being insufficient. And that’s where this whinging is moving into dangerous territory – I’m getting seriously itchy to start taking shots at NL25. I know I can do ok, but I also know that I’m a swingy player and it could be an utter disaster. I don’t play sufficient volume to iron that kind of thing out (which is also why I’m not moving up quickly enough – I’m too lazy to play enough hands!).

To divert myself from making a big mistake I decided to try the MTT route again last night. I played a bunch of 180 & 90 man SNG’s, thinking that a single good win would give me the wriggle room to ‘safely’ take a few NL25 shots.

Of course it didn’t go to plan – I only played a handful and as everyone knows you have to play a whole bunch to realise a ‘real’ return from these things. Out of the 8 I played I only cashed in one, and that was really stupid – I was 3rd in chips and we were down to 15 (from 90). I ended up calling a shove with TPGK to see the with villain with 2 pair. Turned out the villain was 2nd chip stack, and I was out. So stupid… I did the same thing on another 90 man – chip leader until about 20 people left, then threw it away on two badly played hands.

So, still feeling twitchy. I need to come to some kind of decision by Saturday – chances are that’ll be when I’ll have a go if it comes down to it. However if I do it while feeling that I’ve got to make a return I’ll play badly and probably make things worse. And then what happens if it goes well? Even a nice 3 buy-in win won’t push me into NL25 territory – it’ll only make me want to risk my BR more.

Bankroll management sucks.