What does it all mean?

With Pokerstars latest update yesterday all my AHK scripts stopped working. While I can still play 9 tables okay without hotkeys, I find it to be a bit like hard work. So until I get it sorted out I'm back at Full Tilt for a few days. I played in one of their $24 tourneys last night. I don't often play tourneys so was surprised to see that even when people have a sizable stack it was pretty much standard practice to jam it all in with top pair and a decent kicker. I used a couple of new strategies I learned from the "Full Tilt strategy guide" and managed to finish in the top 10, out of over 400 players for a nice little payout. I finally got all my money in before the flop with QQ but was called with AK and saw both an Ace and King come on the flop. More cash game action today and I still say that the low limit cash games are softer at Full Tilt than Pokerstars.

Today's Topic: Pokertracker Stats. What does it all mean?

A lot of people use pokertracker (if you don't, then you should), but very few players know what to look for when analyzing their Pokertracker stats. The first thing you should always do is at the end of each poker session you should use the Pokertracker replay hand history feature to look at the 10 hand you made and lost the most money on in that day. See what mistakes you made and if you had correct odds for making calls. Also check if there were any opportunities to have made more money off your winning hands. While there are many different styles and ways to make money playing poker, the following range of cash game figures is a good start to see if you are playing well.

• Voluntarily Put $ Into the Pot % (VP$IP%) This statistic is how often you put money into the pot when you have nothing in the pot so far. In general, you only want to be playing hands when they'll make you money in the long term. In general, a VP$IP% of 16-20% is considered reasonable, with 16% being incredibly tight, and over 24% being somewhat loose.
  
• Preflop Raise (PF Raise) Raising pre-flop gives you a few advantages. First, it gets opponents to fold. No matter what cards they fold, your odds of winning the hand increase. It may even force a better hand to fold. In general, raising between 9% and 13% of the time is reasonable. A percentage below that is usually to tight, and a percentage above that is too reckless.
  
• Aggression factor (Total AF) our aggression factor is calculated by (Raise % + Bet %) / (Call %), which means an aggression factor of 1.00 means you Raise or Bet as often as you Call. In general, an aggression level between 2.0 and 2.5 is considered quite aggressive. A low aggression factor means you are a passive player, and are probably not making the most out of every hand.
  
• Went to Showdown (Went to SD%) This figure reflects how often you played a hand past the river. This figure should sit between 25 -35%. If it is below 25% then you are probably folding winning hands too often. If it is above 35% then you may be paying off with too many losing hands.
  
• Big Bets per 100 (BB/100) This figure represents the amount of big bets that you have won (For NL holdem a big bet in Pokertracker is 2x the big blind, so for .5/$1 a BB is $2). A good player is expected to win between 2-5 BB/100, over a large number of hands (at least 20000)
  

For the above statistics to be most relevant you need to have a minimum of 10000 hands recorded in your Pokertracker database, and preferably over 20000 hands of data. If you are unsure where to find these figures in, or are having difficulty setting up Pokertracker then I would definitely recommend the "Pokertracker Guide" by Iggy.

Link of the Day:

This link is an Utube video for anyone interested in poker history. It is called "One of a kind" and follows the life of "Stu Ungar", who many consider to be the greatest poker player of all times. A sad story which chronicles the reality of gambling, not just the glamour. Link here.

No news is good news

Not much poker news from me today. Started my day off badly with a few suckouts going against me on Pokerstars, but pulled it back and ended up ahead for the day. In poker any day in the black is always a good day.

Topic of the day: The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition (Book Review)

Just finished reading this new book over the weekend. The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide (Tournament Edition) features a dozen world-class poker players who tell you what it takes to make the final table at a major tourney and how to up your game to a higher level. Included in the dozen players are two World Series of Poker winners—Huck Seed and Chris Ferguson. The others are Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, Gavin Smith, Ted Forrest, David Grey, Mike Matusow, Andy Bloch, Rafe Furst, Richard Brodie and Keith Sexton.

There are 19 meaty chapters to this book. Subjects include no-limit play and the Theory of Leverage; Play Before the Flop; Play After the Flop; Big Stack Play; Short-Stack Play and Online Tournament Strategy. Chapters also focus on pot limit hold'em; limit hold'em; Omaha eight or better, and pot limit Omaha. Chapters also discuss seven card stud tournament play; seven stud eight or better and one on razz.

Even though I don't play a lot of tournaments this book still had a lot of very interesting material and was well-edited. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to improve their tournament game.

Get it from Amazon.com

Today's Link:

Poker Player magazine is a free magazine distributed in cardrooms throughout America. While some of the articles are aimed more at Americans there is still a lot of great advice for all poker players. Download the latest issue in PDF form from here.

Another day another dollar

I went and saw the movie "Mr Brooks" last night, and it was really good. I'm not a big Kevin Costner fan, but he did an excellent job of playing the role of a psychotic killer. If you enjoy thriller movies make sure that you check it out.

Another steady day playing at Pokerstars. Just lately things have been very smooth no big upswings, no big downswings. I know that I'm tempting fate by saying it, but things actually get a bit boring when you happily run along at a 2bb win rate. I'm sure someone will flick the doom-switch any day now.

Today's Topic: Bankroll Management

I get asked by friends that if they have a $500 bankroll what limit they should be playing. The first thing to bear in mind is that if you are just a social player who enjoys playing poker and if you happen to go bust then you just wait to reload with next week's paycheck, then bankroll requirements are fairly irrelevant. Play at a level you enjoy, can afford, and are comfortable at is my best advice. Secondly if you are a losing player then regardless of your bankroll you will lose it eventually if you are not good enough to beat the game.

If you are a semi serious winning player who doesn't want to lose their bankroll by hitting an unlucky losing streak then the following guidelines are the general recommendations:

• Tournaments: If you play MTT or STT tournaments then you should have an absolute minimum, 100 buyins in your account. 200 would be preferable. For all serious players, 100 buyins is the standard, although there is nothing wrong with taking shots at a higher level with less. You can make adjustments for this depending on how willing you are to move down in stakes after a downswing. If you don't mind jumping around stakes, as few as 30-50 buyins might be enough. However, it is preferable to only move up once you have 100 buyins at a given level so if you DO happen to go on a bad run, you won't have to move down to recover. So if you want to play $10 tournaments it is recommend that you have a minimum $1000 bankroll.
  
• Ring Games: A bankroll of 300 Big Bets is the standard recommendation. If you are playing $1/$2, you should have $600 available in your bankroll. If this bankroll cannot be replenished, then you should often have more than 300 BB's available for your current stake. You can certainly take shots at a limit with less than 300 BB's, but be prepared to drop down if you hit a downswing. If you are playing 6-max tables, you will need an even larger bankroll to survive the higher variance.
  

These guideline might sound overly cautious to a beginner, but once you have experiences the inevitable losing streaks that everyone encounters at some stage, you will understand the reason for these recommendations.

Today's Link:

Today's link is one that I found on Iggy's blog that is a great prop bets to try on your friends some time. Link here.

If it’s free it’s me

Hope everyone had a good and profitable weekend. I find the weekends can be a funny time to play online poker. After about 9pm EST I find that most of the recreational players have gone out to party on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving the tables full of solid, dedicated poker players. Not a good time to be playing. If you can wait until about 2am EST (about 5pm Australian time), things seem to loosen up considerable as a lot of drunk recreational players come home after a big night out, and decide a bit of online poker is a good idea. I find as a general rule the most consistently soft times to play poker are Monday and Tuesday night EST.

I spent a bit of my weekend going around all my poker accounts cashing in poker points for worthless merchandise. I've got poker books, pokers T's, Beach towels, Caps, and software all coming my way. While I'm sure a lot of it will end up in the bin, it's always nice receiving a package in the mail.

Today's Topic: Poker Hand Nicknames

You often see people using different nicknames for poker hands when discussing poker in the chat boxes. If you are unsure of some of the nicknames, below is a list of Texas Hold'em starting hand nicknames that have stood the test of time.

AA     Rockets; Bullets; American Airlines
KK     Cowboys
QQ     Canadian Rockets; Canadian Aces; Siegfried & Roy
JJ     Fishhooks; hooks
88     Snowmen; Doggie Balls
77     Sunset Strip
66     Route 66
55     Presto; Speed Limit
44     Canadian Presto
33     Crabs
22     Ducks

AK     Big Slick
AQ     Big Chick; Walking Back to Houston
KQs     Marriage
KQo     Mixed Marriage
KJ     Kojak
K9     Fido; What a Dog
K3     Commander Crab; King Crab
Q7     Computer hand
Q3     Gay Waiter (queen with a tray)
J5     Motown; Jackson Five
T8     Golden Dan
T5     F&W Woolworth's; Five and Dime
T4     Broderick Crawford; Convoy; Good Buddy
T2     Texas Dolly
98     Oldsmobile
96     Big Lick; Dinner for Two
95     Dolly Parton
92     Montana Banana
83     Most feared hand in Holdem
7T     Split
76     Union Oil

72    The Hammer

Today's Link:

For any users of Pokertracker the following free software is a great program which calculates and graphs how lucky or unlucky you have been in any given timeframe. It's always interesting to know if you have been unlucky in any given session of just played badly. This program will help answer this question. Link to Poker-EV here.

Let’s cash those points

I cashed in my Full Tilt points yesterday for a bunch of useless merchandise. I didn't have enough points to get anything worthwhile, and couldn't see me earning enough in the future to make it worthwhile saving them. I got myself a Poker book, JVC headphones, Poker Set, and a beach towel. It got me thinking that I've built up a ton of loyalty points at various sites over the last couple of years. The plan was to save them up, but I think I might spend the weekend going round the various sites cashing in my points for worthless merchandise, should be a bit of fun.

Had another good day on Pokerstars. As I've mentioned before the NL50 Pokerstars games after 1am EST are some of the softest around. Often after a day of work I'm a bit tired to concentrate on playing my A game at NL100. The Pokerstars NL50 games are perfect for these times. If you are Australian the soft time is between about 3pm and 7pm before all the games die off.

Today's Topic: Online payment processors

If you plan on playing a decent amount of poker and want to clear bonuses on various poker sites then it is essential to setup an online ewallet. An ewallet is sort of like an online bank account where you cash money to and from each poker site. The advantage of the ewallet is that payments between the poker sites and your ewallet happen relatively quickly so it makes moving money to various poker sites quite simple. The three main ewallet options are Neteller, Epassporte, and Click 2 pay.

• Neteller:
  

  Neteller is the granddad of online poker ewallets. At one stage they pretty much dominated the poker scene. Because of this the US government took exception to them during their online gambling crackdown and has done their best to cripple neteller. To their credit Neteller has done their best during this difficult period, and now might be making a comeback. Neteller is a listed company on the London AIM exchange (they have just been relisted), which help ensures their integrity.
  

  • Pros: Are accept by most online poker sites, Reasonably secure, able to link to a Neteller Mastercard (for easy withdrawals at any ATM around the world) , good customer service
    
  • Cons: Processing fees are not cheap, Neteller could find it harder to survive now they do not accept American, or Canadian customers.
    
• Epassporte:
  

  Epassporte is a lesser known ewallet. They offer a similar service to Neteller, but are accepted by less poker sites. They have high fees for getting money into your account, but low fees for poker site transfers and withdrawals. So if you are a winning player and don't need to keep loading new money on to your Epassporte account, then they are by far the cheapest ewallet.
  

  • Pros: Cheapest ewallet once funds are in your account, linked to an Epassport visa card (for easy withdrawals at any ATM around the world), can link to a US bank account for fund transfers.
    
  • Cons: Not
    able to be used at a lot of poker sites, average customer service, high fees for initial deposit, low transfer limits.
    
• Click2Pay:
  

  Click2pay is a German ewallet which offers a fairly similar service to the above two.
  

  • Pros: Easy account setup, accepted by most poker sites, good customer service.
    
  • Cons: The most expensive fees of the three, average web site account management features.
    

My recommendation is to get both an Epassporte and Neteller account. If you only want or need one account then stick with neteller as it is accepted by nearly every poker site. If you are a winning poker player (Don't have to reload often) and mainly play on Pokerstars, and Full Tilt, then I think that Epassporte is the best option. Also I would recommend to keep only as much money as you need to with any ewallet. While I feel the 3 ewallets above are all reasonable secure, they will never be anywhere near as safe and secure as your bank account.

Today's Link:

I can't find any interesting links today, so today's link is www.aussiepokeronline.blogspot.com. Yes here. If you have any questions or queries about anything to do with online poker, place it in the comments field below and I'll do my best to answer it.

Have a good weekend everybody and remember you can lead a horse to water, but only a donkey will follow you to the river.

 

Supernova here I come

I'm back playing on Pokerstars for the month. I 'm determined to reach Supernova level and I'll be going out all month to achieve it. I have stepped back to playing 9 tables at a time on Pokerstars. The tables seem to act really fast at Pokerstars, and I think trying to keep up with 12 tables was leading to some costly mistakes for me. The only site I've found where the action moves faster is Ultimate bet.

All the American players with suspended funds in Neteller for the last 6 months have started to have those funds paid to them finally. I am hoping this will loosen up the tables a bit. I think many Americans had given up on ever getting their Neteller money returned so some of them may see it as free money and play a bit looser with it. Fingers crossed.

Today's Topic: Professional No-Limit Hold'em (Book review)

I have just finished reading a new book called "Professional No-Limit Hold'em" by Matt Flynn and Ed Miller. Ed Miller was responsible for writing one of the classic books on poker called "Small Stakes Hold'em", so I have been looking forward to reading this for a while.

This book really teaches you how to play and think like a professional. It shows how to size your bets, manage the pot, manipulate your opponents, know when to go all-in, and avoid the big mistake. It includes critical no-limit concepts like The REM Process, The Commitment Threshold, and Stack-To-Pot Ratios.

I found this book extremely well written and easy to read. Very complicated subjects are explained very simply and in a manner that is easy to understand. I'd have to say most of the materials in the book are geared towards play with "aggressive" or "tricky" opponents which as you move up limits you will find more of. But you will find benefit from this book no matter what blind level you play. You will just find more benefit from certain parts of the book when facing different types of opponents.

I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to improve their poker game.

Get it from Amazon.com

Today' Link

If you ever want to know how many players are playing any level of game on any site then the place to find it is Pokersitescout.com

What to play

Hi everybody. I Didn't feel like playing cash games today, so played in a few tourneys instead. I hardly ever play tourneys and often find them frustrating. It's hard when you spend 3 hours getting close to the money to lose to a 2 outer. I didn't cash in any of the tourneys except to win a satellite to pokerstars Sunday millions. It was fun for a change of pace though. Also did a bit of online casino whoring. 7 sultans is offering a $50 no deposit bonus at the moment. Ended up turning it into $90 after a few hours play. Gotta love FREE money.

Today's Topic: Cash games, Sit n Go, or Multi Table Tournaments.

A few friends just starting out playing poker have asked me what format of poker they should play, and what they can earn more money playing. Personally I prefer cash games, but the first thing to consider is what you enjoy playing. Some people make better tourney players while some are better at the cash games, just play some of each and see what you prefer.

• Sit and gos (SNG): SNG's are basically a single table tournament. Each player buys in for so many chips and usually the top 3 places divide the prize pool. 2 years ago there was a lot of bad play and making money from SNG's was fairly easy. Today there are a lot of people multi-tabling the SNG's who play very well and getting an edge has become harder. SNG's are a fun format and certainly at the lower levels (up to $20 buyins) the level of play is still low. I recommend SNG's for beginners to play before moving on to cash games or tourneys. The risks are low and it is a cheap way to learn poker.
  
• Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) In a MTT each player buys in for a set amount to get a set amount of chips. Normally the prize pool is distributed to the last 10% of player remaining. The great thing about MTTs is that the prize pool can be quite large with first place prizes even for $30 MTTs exceeding $10,000. This is the only form of poker you have a chance to win this sort of money for a small investment. The downside is that it normally takes at least 2-3 hours before you reach the money, and getting knocked out after 3 hours for no money can get frustrating.
  
• Cash games: In cash games you buy in for real money and each bet you place is for real money, rather than chips. The upside to cash games is that your rewards are instant and for skilled players it is possible to have a large edge over worse players. The downside is if you play above your level, or have a bad run, cash games can become very expense. If you are a new poker player I would recommend starting off playing micro stakes and only moving up a level when you are a proven winner at that level.
  

Which one can you earn more money at?

I'll try and answer this by looking at it from a mathematics point of view. Say for example you had $600 to play with each day for 4 hours then the equation would be as follows. I'll look at the return on investment (ROI) for each form of poker.

• Sit and goes (SNG) A good player can play 6 SNG's at once and on average a SNG averages out to about 45 mins each. This mean that for a $600 investment you could play 26 $20 SNGs in a 4 hour period. The ROI for a good $20 SNG player is about 17% or $3.4 per SNG on average. So a good player would expect to earn $3.4 x 26 = $88.40.
  
• 
  Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) A good MTT player expects about a 75% ROI and on average. I would say that a normal MTT session would be about 3 hours. If you multi-table 4 $20 then you could average about 5 MTTs in 4 hours. So $20 x 70%=$14 ROI per MTT. $14 x 5 = $70.
  
• Cash games: With $600 daily investment you could 9 table the NL50 games. An average ROI on investment is about 3 PTBB per 100, which is $3 per table per 100 hands. Normal speed of online poker tables is about 75 hand per hour, so playing 9 table then you could expect to play 2700 hands in 4 hours. $3 x 27 = $81
  

In conclusion all games offer a fairly similar ROI. The main advantage I find in cash games is that there are always plenty of games running, and lots of levels to move up. Also the cash games clear the bonuses at a good rate. But find out which one you enjoy most and stick with it.

Today's Link

Take advantage of the $50 no deposit bonus at 7 Sultans Casino. Like always free money is good money.