Full Tilt progress (sit n gos)

While I have the ring game/VPP challenge on Pokerstars to keep me motivated I have a different challenge on Full Tilt.

I have been studying how the players at the top of the profit leaderboards for Sit N Gos play. I do this by selecting a player and then searching for him on Full Tilt. Now to get to the top of the profit leaderboards (hosted by either the Full Tilt website or Sharkscope or similar) you have to play most days and play many tables concurrently. This means players like "kennl" or Stinko_Mikko are easy to find and observe while they play.

I watched these and other players over the course of several days trying to figure out how they become consistently profitable.  If I can emulate how they play myself maybe I can finally grind up my online bankroll to decent levels.

So look out for me playing the 45 and  90 man sit n gos at various buyin levels.  My Full Tilt balance took another heavy hit at the last FTOPS (see my earlier post about how I lose all my money during FTOPS and/or WCOOP type events) so my balance is pretty low. I am really hoping I can avoid depositing more money but can slowly and carefully build on what I have by emulating the consistent winners.

If I works I will publish the secret formula on the blog!!!

Pokerstars May promotion

Pokerstars are running a promotion for UK players where if they earn a small number of VPPs they get rated like players from other countries who have to earn a much larger number of VPPS. Now I have not played much with VPPs but this gave me an excuse to do so so here is what I have found out:

- playing low-cost tournaments or sit n gos earn such a small number of VPPs it is simply not worth it

- playing limit 9 or 10  handed ring games is the best way to earn VPPs. If I play 6 tables concurrently at $1/$2 limit for about an hour I can earn about 80VPPs

- you earn VPPs to get rated at a "star level". Based on your rated star level. you also earn FPPs. The FPPs are what you spend on goodies or tournament entries. Everyone on Pokerstars starts as a Bronze star and Bronze star guys earn 1 FPP for every VPP they earn. So my 80 VPPS per hour will earn 80FPPs.  When I progress to Silver star, Gold Star, Platinum star and Supanova rating levels I will earn more FPPs for each VPP. This means I can buy goodies more quickly OR enter more tournaments.

- my goal for May is to earn 3000 VPPs which under this offer will elevate me to Platinum star in June and also give me 60,000 free VPPs to push me towards Supanova. you need to earn 100,000 VPPs in a calender year to become Supanova - this is one of the highest ratings and their are special tournaments for Supanova players only.

Now this is interesting for me as I dont play much limit poker and suck at cash games. Maybe by forcing myself to grind away I will get better. I have studied cash games for the last couple of months and changed how I play but I am still a losing/break-even player at best. So this may cost me some money to meet to 3000 VPPs target. But I want to see how it goes.

The Bike casino

I went to The Bicycle casino for the first time this week and played in their noon tournament and then in their evening deep-stack special. 

In the noon tournament (which cost $40) they had about 150 runners and you start with 4000 chips which with the 30 min levels and low blind structure allows quite a bit of play. I played my normal game slowly chipping up to 11,000 chips when the following hand happened. I had QQ in early position and raised 3xbb and got called by the cutoff. The flop came 2-Q-8 rainbow and I bet about half the pot. He raised me 3x my bet and I pushed all in. He called and showed AA and looked quite sad when I showed my set of queens. No need to worry though and the turn brought another ace and I was busto.

The evening tournament is part of a week-long deep stack special they are running and cost $240 so a bit more than my normal buyins. I only had 2 hands of note. The first I had J-10 in the big blind and hit top pair on the flop and 2 pair on the turn. I bet 3/4 pot both times and got called by a guy with pocket 4s. Of course the river was a 4 and I was down to 5500 chips or so. The next hand I was dealt AK in late position and raised 3x to 600. I got 4 callers and the flop was 8h-Ac-6h. Of course I was worried about the flush so I made a pot size bet with 2 callers and the turn was 2d which helped no-one. I decided one last attempt to discourage the draw so I pushed my remaining chips in but got 1 caller who showed 7h 5h for the flush and straight draws. He had 15 outs so about 30% likely to hit on the river and based on his pot odds his call was ok. The river was an 8 and I was busto. 

I thought a lot about this hand and alternate plays such as:

a)  to push all-in on the flop. With 2700 in the pot if I pushed my 5500 there would be 8200 in the pot with him having to call 5500. He would be 60% likely to his one of his outs so a 3/2 favorite.  This makes a call of 5400 to win an 8100 pot ok so he still would have called. Therefore if my math is correct an all-in push on the flop makes no difference  - I would still to go busto. 

b) to check it down after the flop but then I let him hit his draw for free (as well as the other three callers) and prob would be crippled if I called his likely bet on the river. Maybe I could have got away from the hand on the river but that's assuming one of the other four players did not try a steal on the turn. If I called a "steal"  bet on the turn then  I probably could not get away from calling a river bet

c) what if I pushed all-in preflop or at least a much larger bet. The problem here is were were only on level 3 of a deep stack and I was prepared to muck my hand if I missed the flop. But in hindsight the 7-5 hand would have folded to a large preflop raise so maybe this would be a better play. preflop the sb (100) , bb(200), villain (200), 1 limper (200). me (600), the button (600) and the big blind (600) made him call 400 chips to win 2300.  If I had raised to 1000 and the button folded then the pot would be sb(100), bb(200), 1 limper (200), me (1000) and the bg blind (1000) meaning he would have to call 800 to win 2300. If the button also folded he would have to call 800 to win 1700. Ultimately it seems I should have raised preflop to at least 1000 based on a normal raise (3x) plus 2 limpers - this is where I made a mistake and paid the ultimate price.

What about the Bike casino. I liked it inside and especially liked the $40 tournament with the large stack and lots of play. I will definitely go again for this tournament. They take 25% service fee so I will only go if there are 150+ runners otherwise the prize pool is not worth it. Re other stuff I thought the food and drinks were poor compared to Oceans11 but they did have a big menu. The chips/tables/staff were ok but dealers made more mistakes than I see at Oceans and also the floor man seem stretched. I played some 4/8 limit and some 40NL at these were fun tables with the younger crowd on the NL tables as you would expect. 

Driving to the casino was easy too although rush hour in LA sucks and I hate HATE driving in heavy stop and go traffic. Fortunately it takes about 50 mins from my house to the casino so I can leave for the noon tourney about 11am and only will have to deal with traffic if I make it really deep.  Hopefully when I win the tourney that will please me enough to offset my traffic misery but until it happens we will see.

Another win at Oceans 11

So I went to Oceans 11 last night for the evening tournament - only the second time I have played the evening tournament there and the first time I chopped it 4 ways. I arrived late and just made the buyin 3 minutes before level 1 had ended.

I played tight from the start and slowly loosened up until I was a maniac with 3 tables left. I still had a smaller than average stack but I stole the blinds and made the occasional re-steal several times between 25 and 15 players until we were really near the bubble. Then I got lucky and ran AK into A9 to double up and become the chip leader going into the final table.

Interestingly the TD wrote down the prize money for each place on a whiteboard but also wrote the "even chop" number in red alongside each spot. So a 9 way chop was shown alongside 9th place as $xxx, an 8 way chop was shown alongside 8th place as $yyy etc. This probably saved her work with people asking all the time but at the same time encouraged players to request an even chop. And the did...again and again and again.

Everything was going well but several players were requesting a chop from the get-go. Obviously I said no and we got down to 6 players still with me in the lead. A chop was being requested between every hand and everyone else agreed apart from me (I was about 2-1 ahead in chips). If they had offered me a sweetener I probably would have said ok as it was getting late but they did not - they only seemed to consider an even money chop. Anyhow I run KJs into A-10 for a huge pot against one of the middle stacks and lose and now I am back to second in chips.

Another round of whining about chopping and I caved to the peer pressure accepting the chop. Everyone was happy and got their money but I was disappointed in myself afterwards. I think I was the best player on the table and was most likely to win. The even chop amount was slightly more than 3rd place money but the little stack got the same as the big stack and that did not seem right.

Anyhow I wasted some of the winnings playng $4/$8 limit after and could not help thinking I was a wimp for caving in and should hold out next time. Although it was sweet to have another win under my belt the whole chop thing left a bitter taste.

Back grinding at tournaments

I eventually managed to get back to grinding large tournaments after a week or 2 of struggling to get motivated when I got back from Las Vegas.

On Pokerstars the best results I got were:

-  15th in a $22 tourney with 603 runners (won $109)

- 14th in a $11 rebuy with 1242 runners (won $451)

On Full Tilt the best results I got were:

- 22nd in a $11 tourney with 462 runners (win $22)

- 14th in a $3.30 tourney with 335 runners (win $9)

- 77th in a $26 tourney with 1228 runners (win $41)

- 42nd in a $11 tourney with 622 runners (win $15)

- 87th in an $11 tourney with 887 runners (win $13)

- 45th in a $3.30 rebuy with 1195 runners (win $35)

- 91st in a $26 tourney with 1898 runners (win $64)

Notice a similar theme here. I play a tourney for several hours, get really deep and then fall apart right when the payouts are tiny. All the win amounts are barely more than the buyin and make the whole thing seem pointless.

Motivation - lets see. Play 5 hours in a tourney that cost $11 and win $22 - that's $2.20 an hour for your time. I am obviously not going to make a living if I cannot get better.

I know from last year if I keep grinding away and reading/studying everything I can on how to play the closing stages of a tourney I will get a couple of big cashes and my bankroll will get healthy. Right now though I am just repeating the same old thing - enter a tourney,go deep get in the lower money and crash and burn.

Also I am watching the big online pros still, trying to see how they close out a tournament to get to the final table. But I get frustrated sometimes when I see how easy they make it look. Its never that easy for me!!

I'm gonna figure this all out.....eventually

Cash games update - no consistency

So I am still trying to consistently beat cash games. I have tried all sorts of strategies from playing the smallest games to playing several tables at once. I played in live games in Vegas and thought I did ok but was not a consistent winner.

When I multi-table online with 2 tables I seem to lose on one and win a similar amount on the other.  If I go to 4 tables I win on 2 and lose on 2. Doesn't that seem rigged.

So I am reading up online trying to figure out how to beat these games. I have several conflicting thoughts:

a) I can play cheap games (5c/10c) to learn but is anything in these games comparable to $3/$6 or higher. Maybe I will gain experience but maybe that experience will de-moralize me and not be relevant to games where a decent amount of money is at risk.

b) should I play limit or no limit.

c) should I play full ring game (9 or 10 handed) or 6 handed - it seems 6 handed has more action so maybe I should avoid this until I am consistently winning.

These are tough choices. I played some $1/$2 NL and had some decent winning sessions (300+) but then one or 2 losing sessions (500+) and that hurt! I step down to 5c/10c and play for what seems like ages and come out a few dollars up or down - it seems like a waste of time. Even though I am gaining experience I just cannot decide if it is "good experience" or "bad experience".

I have been reading online advice on the forums and general strategy articles. Also I ordered Lee Jones "Winning low limit poker" book from the library - this was recommended to me by a lady playing at the Bellagio when I was in Vegas so I figured it cannot hurt me to read it.

I'll see if it helps....