Played another 15-20 SNG's last night. Things weren't looking too bright and I thought I was going to follow up my good last session with another slight losing one. Managed to squeak in a couple cashes early on, but they weren't sustaining my buy-ins for the next games so after a bit was down about 4 buy-ins. Took some terrible beats too losing AA vs KK for chip lead in one. I just let that stuff roll off me now and laugh it off because hey, I have been on the other end of it too.
Towards the end of my session I finally started to heat up a bit and built a big stack going into the money in a 90 man game. I felt good and wanted the win bad, but alas lost a coinflip late and busted in 4th. That however put me up a decent chunk for the night. So, even when the poker gods don't seem to be smiling down and deliver some tough beats all night, skill can still prevail.
Ah I remembered another goal I had set that I didn't mention in the last post. Pokerstars gives points for their weekly, monthly, and yearly TLB (tournament leader board) depending on where you finish. This is separate from the SNG leader board so the games are all 40+ fields. Well last year I only managed to pull out close to 2900 points. The big name players have more than that in a week often so obviously that's not too many. But considering the buy-ins I play and low volume I had it is a good starting point. Oh and also they only take top ten cashes for weekly, top 20 for monthly, and top 100 for yearly. I barely had over 100 cashes last year. So leading into this year my goal is to reach 6000 TLB points for the year or effectively double my score from last year. That equates to 500 monthly going towards my score which is easily achievable. So far this month I have almost 800 points in my top 20 cashes and clost to 900 for the yearly. Not a bad start, and room for some improvement for sure! Hopefully with some deep runs in weekend MTT's I can really add to those totals in the months to come.
As you can see from my posts, my game is a work in progress. I am striving towards greatness and every time I play learn something new. This year is going to be a breakout for me, I can feel it!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Weekday grinding and 2k10 goals
Had a good session last night. Continued to crush the $1.20 45 & 90 man and $1.75 18 man Turbo SNG's. Out of about 15 games I played, I scored two firsts, a second, and one or two other cashes to have one of my best sessions to date on Pokerstars. That was nice after having a losing session last time I played. Not big for some, but hey you got to start somewhere!
I have decided to make the move to only playing turbo's on weekday sessions as I can put in almost twice the volume of play as regular games in the same amount of time. The fish are still abundant, the games are juicy, and the money's just begging to be taken.
One of my most recent goals I set (after the new year mind you) is to make it into the SNG leaderboard top 100 on a consistent basis. This is a pretty cool format that PS has with scoring points for every 20 games, or block, and keeping tabs. They also have a 100 game block per week, but with all the other games I mix in that one may be hard to hit. The scores only count for 40 or less players and since I mix a good amount of 45 man plus in my games that makes it tough to hit 100 SNG's in a week. Oh and they have different buy in levels for the micro grinders like me all the way up to the high stakes, making it possible for anyone to get there. With my move to turbo's only on weekday's though who knows? Last week was the first week I actually completed a 20 block score and although I started out hot as hell I cooled off with a losing session and ended up ranked 2180th. A good place to start though!
Some of my other goals for 2k10:
1.Play a set schedule. I work a full time job that often times requires weekend work as well. I also like to exercise at least three times a week doing cardio and lifting weights. So I plan to play 4 days a week, with the option of taking one of those days off if I feel mentally unable to concentrate or give it my all. I only like to play when I can give it 100%! Weekdays are reserved for SNG's only as they are the best bankroll building games and allow a ton more volume to be played in a short time span. Weekends I will play a good amount of SNG's with a mix of MTT's in there. Since my bankroll is limited at this time I am limited to which ones I can play, but the $1.10 offer huge player fields and could offer a huge boost with a deep run.
2. Play a minimum of 100 games a week, or 400 games a month. This is by no means a huge goal as some grinders like Boku87 play 400+ games daily. They do not however have a full time job other than poker so that is easy for them. I think this is easily accomplishable, and although I have fallen short to start the year thus far, I plan to ramp it up even more with my turbo SNG only weekdays. Along with that I would like to hit the $1/game mark by mid year. This would at least give me $400 a month in added earnings that would be very nice to have. Don't get me wrong, I'm not starving here but any added income is nice.
3. Keep in shape. Exercising has become a very important part of my life in the past 2 years. Although I am not where I want to be and have fallen back a time or two, I plan to hit it especially hard this year. Going along with that is eating right. All of this will help my mental focus at the tables and concentration on beating the games.
Those are my major goals for this year, along with strive to be the best player I can be and improve my game every time I play. There are always new ways to look at things and spots that may or may not be evident to the casual player but that can be so positive expected value (+EV) to the trained eye. I have the want and the burn to be one of those trained eyes!
I will include more goals as I think of them or accomplish old ones. It's always good to keep things fresh!
I have decided to make the move to only playing turbo's on weekday sessions as I can put in almost twice the volume of play as regular games in the same amount of time. The fish are still abundant, the games are juicy, and the money's just begging to be taken.
One of my most recent goals I set (after the new year mind you) is to make it into the SNG leaderboard top 100 on a consistent basis. This is a pretty cool format that PS has with scoring points for every 20 games, or block, and keeping tabs. They also have a 100 game block per week, but with all the other games I mix in that one may be hard to hit. The scores only count for 40 or less players and since I mix a good amount of 45 man plus in my games that makes it tough to hit 100 SNG's in a week. Oh and they have different buy in levels for the micro grinders like me all the way up to the high stakes, making it possible for anyone to get there. With my move to turbo's only on weekday's though who knows? Last week was the first week I actually completed a 20 block score and although I started out hot as hell I cooled off with a losing session and ended up ranked 2180th. A good place to start though!
Some of my other goals for 2k10:
1.Play a set schedule. I work a full time job that often times requires weekend work as well. I also like to exercise at least three times a week doing cardio and lifting weights. So I plan to play 4 days a week, with the option of taking one of those days off if I feel mentally unable to concentrate or give it my all. I only like to play when I can give it 100%! Weekdays are reserved for SNG's only as they are the best bankroll building games and allow a ton more volume to be played in a short time span. Weekends I will play a good amount of SNG's with a mix of MTT's in there. Since my bankroll is limited at this time I am limited to which ones I can play, but the $1.10 offer huge player fields and could offer a huge boost with a deep run.
2. Play a minimum of 100 games a week, or 400 games a month. This is by no means a huge goal as some grinders like Boku87 play 400+ games daily. They do not however have a full time job other than poker so that is easy for them. I think this is easily accomplishable, and although I have fallen short to start the year thus far, I plan to ramp it up even more with my turbo SNG only weekdays. Along with that I would like to hit the $1/game mark by mid year. This would at least give me $400 a month in added earnings that would be very nice to have. Don't get me wrong, I'm not starving here but any added income is nice.
3. Keep in shape. Exercising has become a very important part of my life in the past 2 years. Although I am not where I want to be and have fallen back a time or two, I plan to hit it especially hard this year. Going along with that is eating right. All of this will help my mental focus at the tables and concentration on beating the games.
Those are my major goals for this year, along with strive to be the best player I can be and improve my game every time I play. There are always new ways to look at things and spots that may or may not be evident to the casual player but that can be so positive expected value (+EV) to the trained eye. I have the want and the burn to be one of those trained eyes!
I will include more goals as I think of them or accomplish old ones. It's always good to keep things fresh!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
First Blog!
So after seeing so many people(chiefly among them poker players) offer their two cents to the world, I have decided to chronicle my own musings on poker, life, and everything in between. Mostly my adventures of trying to come up through the poker ranks from seemingly nothing and actually make some good money at this hobby I spend so much time playing.
A little (ok probably a lot) about my poker life thus far: I started playing poker, as many people did, after the "Moneymaker" boom. Started playing with friends in college home games and immediately thought I knew everything about it. I mean how hard can it be really? Two cards down, five cards up, best hand wins! Little did I know that was only the tip of the iceberg. Eventually I found there were actually books on this game of No Limit Hold Em (NLHE) that offered up mathematical backing and also strategic play. Perhaps this simple game was not so simple after all. Good thing I was studying mechanical engineering so the mathematical parts came semi naturally. The bluffing and timing however left something to be desired.
Well after about a year of home games one of my good friends introduced me to online poker, specifically PartyPoker which at the time was still US friendly. Now I could feed this growing addiction whenever I wanted from anywhere. The discovery of single table Sit N' Go's (SNG's) was immediate. So I deposited my first $50 as most players do and never looked back, until the government decided to pass the midnight legislation known as the Unlawful Internet Gamine Enforcement Act (UIGEA). That's a whole separate topic, the likes of which I will not get into at this time. I had some moderate successes over the year and a half on PartyPoker, even racking up a $2500 score on a $20 Multi Table Tournament (MTT). Most of the money I was winning was still coming from home games though as my friends all decided to take a much more recreational route with the game where I actually chose to study it.
Well after withdrawing all my money from PartyPoker, I eventually moved onto FullTilt and immediately thought with one decent score under my belt I would crush any game. Boy was I wrong! The play had elevated to a much higher level and I soon went broke with the money I had deposited. This was where I finally learned a thing or two about bankroll management and not to "let it ride" on a buy-in that would cause me to go on tilt and then go broke again. I deposited a small amount back on Fulltilt and have been playing with that ever since, although I don't play there much anymore.
It was at this time I started to take notice of a lot of players that were making not only a living, but six figures plus each year. I decided to try to learn from them by watching the games they play and try to pick up any information I could. I heard rumors circulating about Annette_15 and how she started from absolutely nothing on Pokerstars to grind up to crushing the biggest games online. All without even being old enough to set foot into a casino. So I decided to start my own conquest of generating a bankroll from nothing on Pokerstars as well. Keep in mind my volume of play was not even a spec compared to some of the biggest players, but hey I had nothing but time. I found a site, Railbirds.com, that sponsored daily freerolls on PS and FT and started to grind them a bit on Pokerstars as well as the daily round 1 freerolls they offer there. This caused me to also expand my knowledge of all the games including Razz, Stud, Omaha, etc.
Well eventually I had accumulated enough to start playing the 10 cent 360 man turbo's on Stars and would have a cash here or there, but never really ran final table deep. It was at this time I started playing Limit Hold 'em (LHE) cash and Limit Omaha Hi/Lo cash at the .01/.02 level. I would usually flip flop my sessions and pretty soon I was on my way up to the $20 bankroll mark. Keep in mind all that from absolutely nothing. I started to throw in the .25 45 man SNG's and still grinding the .10 360's still with not much success, but enough to grind my bankroll up and down around the $25 mark. Again, most of my time was spent railing top pro's to pick up anything that would add value to my game. At some point I also started to throw in the daily .10 Turbo, .25, and .50 MTT on Stars when I could. Had a few deep runs in the .10, but with 5k plus fields it truly is a lottery at times. Another topic for another day is how donkey's just have no respect or sense of trying to actually play a good game, and thus are so easy to exploit.
Finally the day came when I scored in a .10 360! I made probably the best comeback of my poker life, being blind all in with about 36 people left to come back and win the whole thing! That padded my bankroll by $8 off $ .10 which wasn't bad, but more importantly put me on a much more motivated path. I decided to start to grind the .25 45 man's as my primary game and throw in the daily .25 and .50 when I could. Progress was tough for awhile as I grinded up and over the $40 mark, but once there I decided I would throw in a $1 SNG for every three .25 45's I played. All of this up to this point took me through most of 08 and 09 playing and working a full time job, sometimes 16 hour days. The lack of volume definitely made progress slow.
So leading up to today, towards the end of 09 I finally got over the $50 mark and started to throw in more $1 games with a lot more volume into 2010. I have been crushing the $1 SNG's so far this year and have more tournament leaderboard points (TLB) this month than probably half of last year, and more games played than any other month for me. Still have a few days left in January too. All part of my goals for this year to increase my play a ton and actually start to make some money here. To date I have eclipsed the $110 mark in almost 600 games played. Still a very small sample size with no significant downswings, but that equates to about .18 per game played. I'll start to feel better once I eclipse the 2k games played mark. Check Sharkscope.com for stats.
Anyway that's just a brief history of my poker life to date, in future posts I will try to cue in on some of my goals for this year, my thoughts on improving my game, and just random thoughts on life in general. Hopefully they won't be nearly as long winded as this post, but I can make no guarantees! :) Thanks for reading!
A little (ok probably a lot) about my poker life thus far: I started playing poker, as many people did, after the "Moneymaker" boom. Started playing with friends in college home games and immediately thought I knew everything about it. I mean how hard can it be really? Two cards down, five cards up, best hand wins! Little did I know that was only the tip of the iceberg. Eventually I found there were actually books on this game of No Limit Hold Em (NLHE) that offered up mathematical backing and also strategic play. Perhaps this simple game was not so simple after all. Good thing I was studying mechanical engineering so the mathematical parts came semi naturally. The bluffing and timing however left something to be desired.
Well after about a year of home games one of my good friends introduced me to online poker, specifically PartyPoker which at the time was still US friendly. Now I could feed this growing addiction whenever I wanted from anywhere. The discovery of single table Sit N' Go's (SNG's) was immediate. So I deposited my first $50 as most players do and never looked back, until the government decided to pass the midnight legislation known as the Unlawful Internet Gamine Enforcement Act (UIGEA). That's a whole separate topic, the likes of which I will not get into at this time. I had some moderate successes over the year and a half on PartyPoker, even racking up a $2500 score on a $20 Multi Table Tournament (MTT). Most of the money I was winning was still coming from home games though as my friends all decided to take a much more recreational route with the game where I actually chose to study it.
Well after withdrawing all my money from PartyPoker, I eventually moved onto FullTilt and immediately thought with one decent score under my belt I would crush any game. Boy was I wrong! The play had elevated to a much higher level and I soon went broke with the money I had deposited. This was where I finally learned a thing or two about bankroll management and not to "let it ride" on a buy-in that would cause me to go on tilt and then go broke again. I deposited a small amount back on Fulltilt and have been playing with that ever since, although I don't play there much anymore.
It was at this time I started to take notice of a lot of players that were making not only a living, but six figures plus each year. I decided to try to learn from them by watching the games they play and try to pick up any information I could. I heard rumors circulating about Annette_15 and how she started from absolutely nothing on Pokerstars to grind up to crushing the biggest games online. All without even being old enough to set foot into a casino. So I decided to start my own conquest of generating a bankroll from nothing on Pokerstars as well. Keep in mind my volume of play was not even a spec compared to some of the biggest players, but hey I had nothing but time. I found a site, Railbirds.com, that sponsored daily freerolls on PS and FT and started to grind them a bit on Pokerstars as well as the daily round 1 freerolls they offer there. This caused me to also expand my knowledge of all the games including Razz, Stud, Omaha, etc.
Well eventually I had accumulated enough to start playing the 10 cent 360 man turbo's on Stars and would have a cash here or there, but never really ran final table deep. It was at this time I started playing Limit Hold 'em (LHE) cash and Limit Omaha Hi/Lo cash at the .01/.02 level. I would usually flip flop my sessions and pretty soon I was on my way up to the $20 bankroll mark. Keep in mind all that from absolutely nothing. I started to throw in the .25 45 man SNG's and still grinding the .10 360's still with not much success, but enough to grind my bankroll up and down around the $25 mark. Again, most of my time was spent railing top pro's to pick up anything that would add value to my game. At some point I also started to throw in the daily .10 Turbo, .25, and .50 MTT on Stars when I could. Had a few deep runs in the .10, but with 5k plus fields it truly is a lottery at times. Another topic for another day is how donkey's just have no respect or sense of trying to actually play a good game, and thus are so easy to exploit.
Finally the day came when I scored in a .10 360! I made probably the best comeback of my poker life, being blind all in with about 36 people left to come back and win the whole thing! That padded my bankroll by $8 off $ .10 which wasn't bad, but more importantly put me on a much more motivated path. I decided to start to grind the .25 45 man's as my primary game and throw in the daily .25 and .50 when I could. Progress was tough for awhile as I grinded up and over the $40 mark, but once there I decided I would throw in a $1 SNG for every three .25 45's I played. All of this up to this point took me through most of 08 and 09 playing and working a full time job, sometimes 16 hour days. The lack of volume definitely made progress slow.
So leading up to today, towards the end of 09 I finally got over the $50 mark and started to throw in more $1 games with a lot more volume into 2010. I have been crushing the $1 SNG's so far this year and have more tournament leaderboard points (TLB) this month than probably half of last year, and more games played than any other month for me. Still have a few days left in January too. All part of my goals for this year to increase my play a ton and actually start to make some money here. To date I have eclipsed the $110 mark in almost 600 games played. Still a very small sample size with no significant downswings, but that equates to about .18 per game played. I'll start to feel better once I eclipse the 2k games played mark. Check Sharkscope.com for stats.
Anyway that's just a brief history of my poker life to date, in future posts I will try to cue in on some of my goals for this year, my thoughts on improving my game, and just random thoughts on life in general. Hopefully they won't be nearly as long winded as this post, but I can make no guarantees! :) Thanks for reading!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
