Considering all the old scandals (superuser, potripper etc), which even seem to involve the site’s owner, this is making me reconsider their site. I’d not been too bothered before (after all, superusers are hardly going to target cheeseburger steaks), but the fact that they don’t even use standard SSL is a sign of utter incompetence.

I also wonder how industry regulators missed this – do they audit code at all or is it a simple ‘[x] Secure’ checkbox and they just trust the site. If it’s along those lines then all the other sites could easily have undiscovered vulnerabilities…

Update: Emptied my account at UB and removed all my Cereus rakeback offers. Not sure whether to put the $$$ on Pokerstars or Full Tilt yet – my FT account is badly depleted, but PS gets loads more action. Also it’s not as if Rakeback really makes a big difference with husngs (at least compared to my near break-even cash abilities )

husngs;

It was another month of trying to push into higher staked games – each attempt busting out and having to back pedal a bit to regain confidence. My enforced goal of 20 games to acclimatise into $20s almost worked, but once I cleared the Full Tilt $50 bonus I switched over to Ultimate Bet (who’d offered me a $100 bonus, which might just get cleared by christmas at this rate). However I’d only left about $30 in that account so it was back to $5s and $10s (whatever was available) to rebuild the account a bit first. I’d just got it built to about $100 when it had dawned on me that my overall roll is over $700 – I should be trying $30s, not $20s!

Consequently the obvious happened and a couple of $30 games later I’d blown the account back down to $20 or so (that’s at the 125 game mark). Crawled back to $5s and $10s. I probably should just transfer a couple of hundred from another account, but whatever.

Despite my poor results, the husng players at Ultimate Bet are really bad. Preflop raises are fairly rare and you can pin them down to bluffer, station, nit etc fairly quickly. It seems though that I’m my own worst enemy. For instance I’ll have ground them down to 1/3 of the chips and then do some fool move like call a shove with ATo and end up reversing the chip count. My opponent has made so many bad moves that I start to treat their raises with contempt, and inevitably walk into a monster. Stupid stuff. I’ve even changed my avatar to a fish to remind me who the idiot at the table really is…

Cash;

No, I’ve not really returned to cash games – as explained in an earlier post I did a bit of rush to clear the last few $$$ of my FT bonus and somehow accidentally won at the same time. The blue line that shoots off at the end is rakeback + the bonus.

So end result is +$100 (Rakeback on the husngs is $30 which cancelled out the husng losses). Compared to the last two months that’s fairly poor, but I’m not complaining – it’s still a gain!

Next month? I’m determined not to wimp out of playing the stakes I should be playing. That means $30 games. Unless I get a few games in a row that’ll mean transferring some money to my UB account, but no big deal really.

The last one was for $50 and you had to play 20 days out of the month, this one’s a lot shorter where it’s just 9 days for $25. Still nothing to complain about

I’d only just managed to clear the $50 rush poker bonus. It had been steadily clearing over the last month and I ended up with just minutes to go and 5 Full Tilt points left for the last $5. So, despite all the obvious dangers, I popped open a bunch of NL25 rush tables with the intentions of fold, fold, fold just to get those last few points.

Somehow though I kept getting dealt great hole cards like AJs and I *had* to see a few flops. You’re probably expecting me to say that it all went tits up and in chasing that $5 of bonus I lost over $50, but no! It went my way for a change! I took a couple of 50bb pots and then shoved a TPTK (I know, dodgy) to see my opponent on a flush draw – it held!

So in exactly 3 minutes and 45 seconds I played 36 hands winning $53! Even more importantly I cleared the final $5 of the rush bonus. Sustainable?

It’s perhaps just as well though – this month has been breakeven on the husngs so far. My attempts at the $20s has been quite swingy, and I’ve not had any major heaters on the $10s to cover it. In fact as of right now it’s actually -ve with only rakeback pushing it into the black (well almost. -$0.50 is close enough).

I then was told that I’ve a $100 bonus on Ultimate Bet to be played out. So I’ve switched there for the time being. The bonus isn’t so great though – once I’d figured out how much rake it would take to clear, it turns out that it takes almost three times as much as the Full Tilt bonus took. So pretty much so slowly that it’s probably not worth it. It’s the same thing for the Cake sign-up bonus – I still haven’t even cleared $10 of that and I’m probably close to the time limit on that one.

Since my site is promoting these sites with their bonuses etc, I think I ought to put some work into figuring out how to compare one site’s bonuses against another, and display them in terms of Rake. I should imagine there will be some big differences…

Update: Wow, the players at UB are annoying. Some guy limped his AA and unfortunately I walked into it with TP – he then typed ‘f u’ into the chat. Aggressive calling at it’s best. Then today I had a player who showed his hole cards every time I folded my button preflop. I had to explain how meaningless that was since it was getting really irritating (so maybe not so meaningless). I’d made a couple of bad moves and he was ahead 2:1 and he started suggesting I needed to go all-in (blinds were still 10/20 – very slow structure at UB). I obliged him with JJ but unfortunately his 99 hit a set.

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…

The problem is that I know the basics, and when thinking straight can apply them well (including postflop). Once I start winning I start feeling bulletproof and play back at hands which I should just be folding. A few fancy plays go my way and I’m trying to win every pot going. Of course it doesn’t end well…

This month started with a few huge hands that went my way and gave me a 7 buy-in headstart. It took losing every penny of that plus a bit more before I realised I had to take a step back and see that I was being an idiot.

So today I folded when I was obviously beat, and didn’t float all those missed flops. It was a bit swingy, but came out up in the end;

Even nicer, this was on Ultimate Bet where my account had been seriously depleted. This put it back to a reasonable amount where I could multitable without worrying about the dreaded ‘you have insufficient funds’ popup when trying to reload. If my next post has a similar graph then it looks like I’m back on track.

As an aside, Yegor suggested playing limit hold’em. Such a weird game! While the blinds were $0.05/$0.10 the swings were tiny and similar to NL2 – no wonder bankroll management is much lower for limit compared to no limit. It was also a struggle against draws – getting AA preflop was always a minefield as you try to build a pot while watching each street conspire to give your opponent that straight with his 67o.

Compared to NLHE, limit hold’em is allegedly much lower in variance while the contribution from the player’s skill is less (pot odds become a bigger factor than bluffs). Possibly that might be a plus point at microstakes though. Also it may have less of the internet generation of players (ie more players coming from live games and less from 2p2), which might be useful too. I’m not sure how much effort I want to put into it though, but possibly more than PLO – I’m coming to hate variance…

So this month started out well, but then died at the end;

And by site;
Site(hands): $$$ (rb = rakeback)
————————
FT(1216): $62.07+$8.08(rb)
PS(1050): -$12.95
UB(1172): -$22.97+$2.69(rb)
PP(882): -$27.94

I don’t really know what to make of things – there were plenty of bad beats I guess, but it’s hard to tell if that’s the real reason I lost 6 buy-ins in less than 300 hands. It devastated the money I put into PS, UB and PP – now I really need to reload them, although such a crushing has put me off playing there now. If it had happened at Full Tilt at least I would have had Rakeback to console me.

ok, here are all the worst losing hands in the 6 buy-in crash. Any advice welcome…

• #1 Not sure what I was thinking here. Just dumb really
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($9.85)
  UTG+1 ($10)
  Hero ($22.40)
  BTN ($15.15)
  SB ($10.25)
  BB ($6.20)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is CO 8 8
  UTG calls $0.10, UTG+1 calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.30, 2 folds, BB calls $0.20, UTG calls $0.20, UTG+1 calls $0.20

  Flop: 3 6 J ($1.25, 4 players)
  BB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $1, Hero calls $1, BB folds, UTG folds

  Turn: 5 ($3.25, 2 players)
  UTG+1 bets $3, Hero raises to $9, UTG+1 goes all-in $5.70

  River: A ($20.95, 2 players, 1 all-in)

  Final Pot: $20.95
  Hero shows a pair of Eights
  8 8
  UTG+1 shows three of a kind, Threes
  3 3

  UTG+1 wins $19.65 (net +$9.65)

  Hero collects $0.30 (net -$10)
  BB lost $0.30
  UTG lost $0.30

• #2 I’m a calling station, obviously
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($8.55)
  UTG+1 ($10)
  CO ($4.80)
  Hero ($16.35)
  SB ($6.90)
  BB ($1.60)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is BTN 7 7
  UTG raises to $0.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.50, 2 folds

  Flop: 2 3 3 ($1.15, 2 players)
  UTG bets $1.30, Hero calls $1.30

  Turn: 2 ($3.75, 2 players)
  UTG bets $1.20, Hero calls $1.20

  River: 9 ($6.15, 2 players)
  UTG bets $4, Hero calls $4

  Final Pot: $14.15
  Hero shows
  7 7
  UTG shows a full house, Nines full of Threes
  9 9

  UTG wins $13.50 (net +$6.50)

  Hero lost $7

• #3 Bad beat – I think I played this correctly
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  5 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($10.63)
  CO ($2)
  BTN ($8.75)
  Hero ($16.96)
  BB ($3.90)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 5 players) Hero is SB 3 3
  1 fold, CO checks, BTN raises to $0.45, Hero calls $0.40, BB calls $0.35, CO folds

  Flop: 3 10 A ($1.35, 3 players)
  Hero bets $1.20, BB calls $1.20, BTN raises to $3.30, Hero goes all-in $16.51, BB goes all-in $2.25, BTN goes all-in $5

  Turn: 6 ($30.81, 3 players, 3 all-in)

  River: 4 ($30.81, 3 players, 3 all-in)

  Final Pot: $30.81
  BTN shows (Flush ace high)
  9 K
  Hero shows (Flush ace high)
  3 3
  BB shows (One pair aces)
  K A

  BTN wins $20.48 (net +$11.73)

  Hero collects $8.21 (net -$8.75)
  BB lost $3.90

• #4 I think I played this ok – worth going to showdown, but he beat me
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($2.21)
  UTG+1 ($5.04)
  CO ($5.39)
  Hero ($17.72)
  SB ($12.62)
  BB ($8.99)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is BTN K 10
  2 folds, CO calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.30, SB raises to $1.10, 1 fold, CO folds, Hero calls $0.80

  Flop: Q 10 J ($2.40, 2 players)
  SB bets $2.40, Hero calls $2.40

  Turn: K ($7.20, 2 players)
  SB checks, Hero checks

  River: 8 ($7.20, 2 players)
  SB bets $4, Hero calls $4

  Final Pot: $15.20
  Hero shows
  K 10
  SB shows (Straight ten to ace)
  A A

  SB wins $14.44 (net +$6.94)

  Hero lost $7.50
  CO lost $0.10

• #5 HU this is fine, but 3way? I guess it’s still ok
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($10.77)
  UTG+1 ($11.08)
  CO ($25.67)
  BTN ($4.04)
  SB ($9.72)
  Hero ($10.15)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is BB A K
  UTG raises to $0.40, 2 folds, BTN raises to $0.80, 1 fold, Hero goes all-in $10.05, UTG goes all-in $10.37, BTN goes all-in $3.24

  Flop: 9 8 J ($25.01, 3 players, 3 all-in)

  Turn: 10 ($25.01, 3 players, 3 all-in)

  River: 3 ($25.01, 3 players, 3 all-in)

  Final Pot: $25.01
  Hero shows
  A K
  UTG shows
  A A
  BTN shows
  J K

  UTG wins $24.01 (net +$13.24)

  Hero lost $10.15
  BTN lost $4.04

• #6 Bad beat I reckon, although he was never folding here
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($12)
  UTG+1 ($11.78)
  CO ($12.83)
  BTN ($6.04)
  SB ($9.98)
  Hero ($10)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is BB 10 10
  2 folds, CO raises to $0.40, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.30

  Flop: 7 9 8 ($0.85, 2 players)
  Hero bets $0.60, CO calls $0.60

  Turn: J ($2.05, 2 players)
  Hero bets $1.46, CO calls $1.46

  River: 8 ($4.97, 2 players)
  Hero bets $3.54, CO raises to $7.67, Hero goes all-in $4

  Final Pot: $20.18
  Hero shows
  10 10
  CO shows
  J J

  CO wins $19.18 (net +$9.05)

  Hero lost $10

• #7 I tend to play AQs like AKo – is that wrong?
  $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Holdem
  6 Players

  Stacks:
  UTG ($11.58)
  UTG+1 ($9.15)
  CO ($13.69)
  BTN ($11.33)
  Hero ($10)
  BB ($9.32)

  Pre-Flop: ($0.15, 6 players) Hero is SB A Q
  UTG raises to $0.20, 2 folds, BTN raises to $0.60, Hero calls $0.55, BB raises to $2.60, UTG folds, BTN folds, Hero goes all-in $9.40, BB goes all-in $6.72

  Flop: 10 5 9 ($20.12, 2 players, 2 all-in)

  Turn: 6 ($20.12, 2 players, 2 all-in)

  River: 9 ($20.12, 2 players, 2 all-in)

  Final Pot: $20.12
  Hero shows
  A Q
  BB shows
  K K

  BB wins $18.47 (net +$9.15)

  Hero collects $0.68 (net -$9.32)
  UTG lost $0.20
  BTN lost $0.60

I took out $150 and spread it across Ultimate Bet, Party Poker and Pokerstars. I’m not that used to the interfaces on UB or Party so figured I’d not multisite them simultaneously, and just play UB today. I was quite pleased to find a reload bonus on Ultimate Bet, so that’ll boost the earnings there a bit.

You know when you read the beginner’s forums on 2p2 etc, and there’s usually someone whinging about how it’s impossible to microstakes because everyone calls no matter how much you raise preflop, and they always try to see every street and their 84o always manages to make a straight crushing your aces?

Well that’s the embodiment of NL10 Ultimate Bet. Unfortunately it took me a little while to adjust;

I’d raise on the button with my usual ATC and if the blinds didn’t call then the limper(s) in the pot certainly would (usually all of them would). Even if I’d managed to isolate one of them, a cbet on a decent flop would also get called. I realised I was spewing money with what would normally be reasonable play.

So I tightened up my range, mainly in late position (which is normally fairly wide, but there’s not much point messing around when the play’s so loose – blinds, UTG and MP position stayed roughly the same). With pocket pairs I tried to see flops a bit cheaper than the usual 3bb. The plan is to just value bet – fit or fold good starting hands and then make them pay when they hit.

I made a few hands and recovered most of my losses, then hit a dry spell (plus a few decent players appeared). You can see from the graph exactly what happened when! The dry spell is annoying – playing this kind of style you have a hugely negative redline, and it’s a steady drain of money.

So, results not so hot so far – this is becoming a test to see which site loses me the least rather than wins me the most. Early days though.

Updated (party poker to the rescue!):

FT (136 hands):     $1.33 + $0.60(rakeback)
PS (153 hands):    -$12.35
UB (330 hands):  -$8.77  + $1.42(Rakeback)
PP (304 hands):     $15.05

total: -$6.72