During the long weekend, I managed to place ITM in a couple of tournaments that I played. But pretty small scale. $5,000 guaranteed over at Cake netted me $75. Next day, $4000 guaranteed, ITM again but for a measly profit of $60.
Last night, I played the 3K guaranteed at Full Tilt. Finished 7th for $150.
It's like I'm playing well enough to get paid, but I cannot seem to breach Top 3 where the good money is. Its not like I'm playing too passive. I fully understand the top heavy nature of MTTs and I really go aggressive once I hit ITM, but I can't seem to win the 50/50 races.
In fact, my feeling is I'm maybe playing too aggressive. Case in point is last night's FTP tourney, I had about medium stack down to about 12 players. And I was willing to race with A-10 twice against low stack pushers. One showed 8-8 and I lost. The other showed 4-4 and I lost again. This totally devastated my stack and probably cost me top 5.
Of course, rivering a flush and getting beat by a bigger flush was the kicker. But that's poker.
I am thinking whether I should tone down the aggressiveness a bit to place higher. But my mantra is Top 3 or nothing and the only way to do this especially in low buy in donkaments is to be willing to race. Hopefully my luck picks up in the succeeding tourneys and I finally take down one of these suckers. =)
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
WCOOP satellite win and trading W$
As you probably know, the Pokerstars Word Championship of Online Poker happens this September and satellites are in full swing right now. WCOOP offers humungous guarantees and is one of the biggest events in online poker.
To make the story short, I managed to qualify for Event No. 6 which is a $530 buy-in, $3M guaranteed tournament thru the Steps qualifiers.
If you're not aware, Steps are basically like playing a normal SNG. Placing in the top two usually geta you a ticket for Step 2. Then you play a Step 2 SNG and if you place in that, then you get Step 3 and so on.
For me, its better than playing a large qualifying tournament for 2 reasons. One, I believe I have the necessary expertise in SNGs to at least compete and have a fair chance of winning. Two, it is perfect for the limited time I have. I can just play a step 1 SNG now, then play step 2 tomorrow or even a week from now. I am not forced to sit for 5 hours straight or wake up in an ungodly hour just to play a qualifier.
Anyway, last night I won one of the Step 4 SNGs and in return I get the $530 ticket for Event 6. I was quite happy since my investment was less than $40. Until I checked the schedule and saw that it will start at 3AM and was a 2 day tournament. It also coincided with a trip to India that I had to go to.
I know that $3M is a great guarantee and hope springs eternal blah blah. But I am quite realistic and I know that my chances in a field of 5,000+ players is quite slim.
So it was an easy decision to make. I unregistered for the tournament and I got 530 W$ in return. This is the first time I got W$ in pokerstars and I googled what I could do with it. Well, it seems that I can use this just like real money and spend it on tournament entry fees. But it was only allowed for special event tourneys like the WCOOP and other similar events. I couldn't use it for a normal $12 tournament or even SNGs. It seems that T$ are better since these could be used for almost any tourney.
So I googled some more and found that there are sites that allowed you to sell these W$ for real money less a certain processing fee. So I clicked on the first site which offered me $482 real dollar in exchange for my 530W$. I arranged the transaction over at Pokerstars and that was it. My pokerstars account was richer by $482.
In hindsight, I actually made a mistake. It seems that there are a lot of sites which offer this exchange service and just like banks, they gave different rates. Its a good thing that the first site I clicked actually offered the best rate when I canvassed the other sites. So all's well that ends well.
Right now, I will most probably try the steps again and see if I can get another ticket. Heheh .... Maybe this time I might be tempted to play it.
To make the story short, I managed to qualify for Event No. 6 which is a $530 buy-in, $3M guaranteed tournament thru the Steps qualifiers.
If you're not aware, Steps are basically like playing a normal SNG. Placing in the top two usually geta you a ticket for Step 2. Then you play a Step 2 SNG and if you place in that, then you get Step 3 and so on.
For me, its better than playing a large qualifying tournament for 2 reasons. One, I believe I have the necessary expertise in SNGs to at least compete and have a fair chance of winning. Two, it is perfect for the limited time I have. I can just play a step 1 SNG now, then play step 2 tomorrow or even a week from now. I am not forced to sit for 5 hours straight or wake up in an ungodly hour just to play a qualifier.
Anyway, last night I won one of the Step 4 SNGs and in return I get the $530 ticket for Event 6. I was quite happy since my investment was less than $40. Until I checked the schedule and saw that it will start at 3AM and was a 2 day tournament. It also coincided with a trip to India that I had to go to.
I know that $3M is a great guarantee and hope springs eternal blah blah. But I am quite realistic and I know that my chances in a field of 5,000+ players is quite slim.
So it was an easy decision to make. I unregistered for the tournament and I got 530 W$ in return. This is the first time I got W$ in pokerstars and I googled what I could do with it. Well, it seems that I can use this just like real money and spend it on tournament entry fees. But it was only allowed for special event tourneys like the WCOOP and other similar events. I couldn't use it for a normal $12 tournament or even SNGs. It seems that T$ are better since these could be used for almost any tourney.
So I googled some more and found that there are sites that allowed you to sell these W$ for real money less a certain processing fee. So I clicked on the first site which offered me $482 real dollar in exchange for my 530W$. I arranged the transaction over at Pokerstars and that was it. My pokerstars account was richer by $482.
In hindsight, I actually made a mistake. It seems that there are a lot of sites which offer this exchange service and just like banks, they gave different rates. Its a good thing that the first site I clicked actually offered the best rate when I canvassed the other sites. So all's well that ends well.
Right now, I will most probably try the steps again and see if I can get another ticket. Heheh .... Maybe this time I might be tempted to play it.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Like rain on a hot summer day
As I noted in a previous post, I wanted to start playing tourneys again motivated by the recent big wins of local players. But as usual my schedule was not allowing me much of anything. I think I played 2 tourneys from that time and that's pretty much it.
I don't remember too much of the details but I know I quickly busted out in those 2 tourneys. One was a $20+2 buyin, the other a $30+3. Getting back to the tournament groove after playing purely SNGs for a good couple of months was turning out harder than I expected.
Well, that was until Sunday. For the first time in a long long while, I had the Sunday afternoon off. So for kicks, I registered for a $5+0.50 buy in $500 added tourney over at Pokerroom. 630+ players joined so prize pool was around $3,700, top 70 got paid. I usually don't like joining these kinds of tourneys as the number of players was just too much for the free time that I had.
But what the heck, I wasn't doing anything and I needed the practice. I played my usual tight game, looking for spots to steal. Doubled up with 33 against AQ. Then back to tight again.
I then got AA with about half of the field gone. Lots of small stacks. Somebody goes all in, somebody calls. I go over the top and that was enough to coast me to the money.
With about 50 left, I was pretty much low stack but was happy to make it to the money although 41-50 was only around 4x my buy-in. My M was already in the 6 to 8 range when I get A3 suited diamonds in middle position.
Shoot, let's take a chance. I go all in hoping for the steal. And I get two callers. Fuucking Sheeeeit. First Caller shows AK. Second Guy shows 99. Well, I was pretty much drawing dead. But surprise surprise. Flop was K rag rag with 2 diamonds. I was chanting "diamonds, diamonds" as the turn came. Blank. River was the lovely 7 of diamonds. Yahahahah !! Guy with AK was cursing me. Calling me a fish and other nasty poker names. Blamed the poker site for cheating and on and on. I pushed, he called with a better hand. Nobody made a bad decision. It was just the poker gods favoring me that day. And besides, its $5.50 dude.
That triple-up was enough to get me to top 10 playing my usual game. Don't remember much of the final table details. I just played it the way I would play an SNG. I knew that I stole a lot as the table was tight.
When the smoke cleared, I finished 2nd for a cool $550. Nothing big but not too shabby either. First was $900, but the chip leader got 5 times my chips when we went heads up. I doubled up once. Then pushed with K4. He called with KQ and that was it.
Hard to describe the feeling of finishing 2nd out of 600 plus after not playing tourneys for a while. The picture says it better. =)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Playing Break-even Poker
Don't you just hate it when you've played a good number of games, and you check your stats, and realize that you've just been playing break even poker for the past few weeks.
For a grinder who plays a huge number of games, this is acceptable because of rakeback. But for myself and my limited number of games, rakeback is very small and negligible. So playing breakeven feels like a waste of time.
This is exactly the situation I find myself in July. Nothing really special. No big win streaks, no big losses either.
Of course, its better than losing. But at least when you're losing, you're trying to actively find the leak and analyzing your hands. When you're coasting along winning some and then losing it back, its like you're lost in a maze and you don't know where to go.
You don't know if you want to change your current playing strategies as it could just be variance and your playing style is already optimal. Changing something might suddenly cause you to play sub-optimal.
I think this is where playing with a group of poker savvy friends become a benefit. At least you can show them your hands and let them analyze it to see if improvements can be made. Unfortunately, my group of friends are all beginners in this game so I have to wait and let them mature before I can even discuss hands with them.
Oh well, at least I'm not complaining about a really unlucky streak. Let's hope it picks up in the next few days. =)
For a grinder who plays a huge number of games, this is acceptable because of rakeback. But for myself and my limited number of games, rakeback is very small and negligible. So playing breakeven feels like a waste of time.
This is exactly the situation I find myself in July. Nothing really special. No big win streaks, no big losses either.
Of course, its better than losing. But at least when you're losing, you're trying to actively find the leak and analyzing your hands. When you're coasting along winning some and then losing it back, its like you're lost in a maze and you don't know where to go.
You don't know if you want to change your current playing strategies as it could just be variance and your playing style is already optimal. Changing something might suddenly cause you to play sub-optimal.
I think this is where playing with a group of poker savvy friends become a benefit. At least you can show them your hands and let them analyze it to see if improvements can be made. Unfortunately, my group of friends are all beginners in this game so I have to wait and let them mature before I can even discuss hands with them.
Oh well, at least I'm not complaining about a really unlucky streak. Let's hope it picks up in the next few days. =)
Monday, July 14, 2008
Back to the Tournament Trail?
I heard from pokermanila that an online Pinoy player just placed 3rd in the Pokerstars Sunday Warm up for a cool $62K and change. That's about 2.8 million pesos. Very nice score, indeed !!!
I've been stuck playing just SNGs this year due to time constraints. But this news has sort of gotten me thinking of trying the tourneys again.
I did fairly well last year (not to the point of reaching 5 figure cashes) when I exerted time and effort to join regular tourneys. My win/cash rate was OK and I had a positive ROI. My main problem was that tourneys just take too damn long and the good ones start after midnight philippine time. I am not exactly young and I need to get at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep to function well the next day.
Also, it was extremely frustrating to play 5 or 6 hours at a time, then just place in the money for 2x or 3x your buy-in. Tourneys are designed be top heavy but it really takes a lot of patience and a good amount of luck to hit top 3.
So hats off to the pinoy player. And this should show people who are still on the fence about online poker its potential. Imagine sitting at home, playing what is essentially a game in your PC and earning 2 million pesos.
Of course I'm oversimplifying things, but you get my point. =)
I've been stuck playing just SNGs this year due to time constraints. But this news has sort of gotten me thinking of trying the tourneys again.
I did fairly well last year (not to the point of reaching 5 figure cashes) when I exerted time and effort to join regular tourneys. My win/cash rate was OK and I had a positive ROI. My main problem was that tourneys just take too damn long and the good ones start after midnight philippine time. I am not exactly young and I need to get at least 6 or 7 hours of sleep to function well the next day.
Also, it was extremely frustrating to play 5 or 6 hours at a time, then just place in the money for 2x or 3x your buy-in. Tourneys are designed be top heavy but it really takes a lot of patience and a good amount of luck to hit top 3.
So hats off to the pinoy player. And this should show people who are still on the fence about online poker its potential. Imagine sitting at home, playing what is essentially a game in your PC and earning 2 million pesos.
Of course I'm oversimplifying things, but you get my point. =)
Monday, July 7, 2008
Multi-tabling SNGs
Let me just quickly write down my thoughts on this issue as this is relevant to my play now. For players just starting to multi-table, this should be an interesting post.
You will always hear from poker players everywhere that playing SNGs is all about the volume. Initially, I was hesitant to agree. I always thought that ROI was a better gauge of success. Profits will eventually follow. But I now realize I am wrong about this and will explain why. This is probably old information for some of you grinders, but should be good for the beginners.
My ave ROI in SNGs as a whole is somewhere in the 15% range. It is a decent ROI but this is achieved usually playing only 1 or 2 tables at a time. Assuming that I play 2 games in a day. This will total 60 games in a month. Assuming I play 11+1 SNGs. Then my total expected monthly profit for SNGs is 60 x 11 x 0.15 = $99
Now, let's see what happens if I multi-table SNGs which I have been doing only recently. For arguments sake, I will assume that I only play 3 tables at one time which is easily achieved. This means that I can play 6 games in one day or a total of 180 games in a month. Obviously my ROI will drop as I now pay less attention to each table. There are many calculations out there about how much your average ROI drops for every table you add. But for simplicity's sake, I will assume it will drop to a low of 6% which is a very conservative estimate for 3 tabling. Then my total monthly profit becomes 180 x 11 x 0.06 = $118.80
Even at this very simple monthly progression of 1 table to 3 tables and assuming a big drop in ROI. Your profit still grew by 20%. This is not even counting any rakeback or bonus or the added player points that you get for playing more games which translates to some value.
So same time spent for poker playing. But you get a higher overall profit at the end of the month. Common sense, right ?
Yes, your ave ROI drops. But at the end of the day, it is the time that you spend playing poker versus the profit that you get which is more relevant. In mathematical terms, it is the profit per hour.
OK, a note of warning. I am not saying that multi-tabling is automatically equivalent to better profits. The premise of this post assumes that you are a somewhat experienced winning player and you know the basics of SNG play, push/fold strategy, ICM, the relevance of Q and M, sklansky's gap concept, etc. Because as you begin to multi-table more and more tables, your decision time has to be quicker. Therefore, you have to be following clear cut rules on what hands to play/push/fold. There is not much time to analyze player tendencies and whether somebody is bluffing or not. It is all about making +EV decisions.
Therefore, the logic I have presented in this post is strictly not for beginners and especially not for negative ROI players. Beginners are better off learning the ropes by playing 1 table at a time. Only if you are already winning consistently in playing 1 table SNGs will you reap the benefits of multi-tabling.
As for myself, I have only started multi-tabling 3 tables consistently the past 2 months. So it is a little early to analyze my results. I have noticed a slight drop in my ROI, but so far so good. I will give further analysis on this maybe by the end of the year when I have accumulated more info.
Thanks for reading. =)
You will always hear from poker players everywhere that playing SNGs is all about the volume. Initially, I was hesitant to agree. I always thought that ROI was a better gauge of success. Profits will eventually follow. But I now realize I am wrong about this and will explain why. This is probably old information for some of you grinders, but should be good for the beginners.
My ave ROI in SNGs as a whole is somewhere in the 15% range. It is a decent ROI but this is achieved usually playing only 1 or 2 tables at a time. Assuming that I play 2 games in a day. This will total 60 games in a month. Assuming I play 11+1 SNGs. Then my total expected monthly profit for SNGs is 60 x 11 x 0.15 = $99
Now, let's see what happens if I multi-table SNGs which I have been doing only recently. For arguments sake, I will assume that I only play 3 tables at one time which is easily achieved. This means that I can play 6 games in one day or a total of 180 games in a month. Obviously my ROI will drop as I now pay less attention to each table. There are many calculations out there about how much your average ROI drops for every table you add. But for simplicity's sake, I will assume it will drop to a low of 6% which is a very conservative estimate for 3 tabling. Then my total monthly profit becomes 180 x 11 x 0.06 = $118.80
Even at this very simple monthly progression of 1 table to 3 tables and assuming a big drop in ROI. Your profit still grew by 20%. This is not even counting any rakeback or bonus or the added player points that you get for playing more games which translates to some value.
So same time spent for poker playing. But you get a higher overall profit at the end of the month. Common sense, right ?
Yes, your ave ROI drops. But at the end of the day, it is the time that you spend playing poker versus the profit that you get which is more relevant. In mathematical terms, it is the profit per hour.
OK, a note of warning. I am not saying that multi-tabling is automatically equivalent to better profits. The premise of this post assumes that you are a somewhat experienced winning player and you know the basics of SNG play, push/fold strategy, ICM, the relevance of Q and M, sklansky's gap concept, etc. Because as you begin to multi-table more and more tables, your decision time has to be quicker. Therefore, you have to be following clear cut rules on what hands to play/push/fold. There is not much time to analyze player tendencies and whether somebody is bluffing or not. It is all about making +EV decisions.
Therefore, the logic I have presented in this post is strictly not for beginners and especially not for negative ROI players. Beginners are better off learning the ropes by playing 1 table at a time. Only if you are already winning consistently in playing 1 table SNGs will you reap the benefits of multi-tabling.
As for myself, I have only started multi-tabling 3 tables consistently the past 2 months. So it is a little early to analyze my results. I have noticed a slight drop in my ROI, but so far so good. I will give further analysis on this maybe by the end of the year when I have accumulated more info.
Thanks for reading. =)
Thursday, July 3, 2008
False Guarantees
Example No. 1
Car Battery company offers you 15 months full replacement warranty on their maintenance free whatchamacallit batteries. You happily buy one. Battery will almost all the time fail on the 16th or 17th month.
Obvious ba .... batteries are finite things... they will eventually lose the electrical charge and the plates will wear out. The battery companies have this computed exactly so their warranties will end right before this happens.
So those long warranties are actually marketing gimmicks. Very seldom do you encounter factory defective batteries since they're just plates enclosed in a box.
Example No. 2
Product on the internet ..... guaranteed to remove wrinkles, make your boobs grow bigger, make your dong longer .............100% satisfaction or your money back .
Gullible customer whips out credit card and swipes away .......... product comes to you via mail ... nicely packaged in a bottle with some murky green liquid inside .......... ooooh
Applies it religiously every day ........ waits the requisite 2 weeks stated on the box ............. looks at it ......... and doesn't see any difference .... except for a green fuzz that is growing on the shaft ..........
Livid with anger ... calls up the 1800 hotline which is now non existent ...... CHAching
Example No. 3
Announced Poker Tournament .... 500K Guaranteed ...........Buy in is only 5K........... WOW ..
Smaller print says that tourney will only start if 100 players are present ..........
Are you smarter than a 5th Grader ?
Math Question .... What is 5K multiplied by 100 ?
English Question .... What is the definition of GUARANTEE ?
Ethics Question ...... Are you even for real ?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
