Bloggers weekend

I'm hoping to play a couple of blogger tourneys this weekend. Raisetheriver.com has their final premier league game on Friday at 8.30pm BST. I've only played in a couple of these because of traveling and losing my notebook, so it would be nice to play in the final one. Pokerstars $40,000 bloggers freeroll is on Sunday so that should be a lot of fun.

Got my insurance payout for my notebook, so have used it to buy a new Dell 1720 notebook. Should be delivered in about 2 weeks. I've looked around at some other brands, but since I already owned a dell and had no issues with it, I decided to stick with them. Still want to get a large monitor, but the prices seem to be in free-fall at the moment, so might wait a month or two and see if I can't pick up a bargain.

I've gotta rush, I've got friends coming over for dinner and drinks, before hitting the town. Have a good weekend everyone, and hope to see a few of you at the bloggers tourneys over the weekend. Good luck!

Thinking big

Today was fairly uneventful at the Pokerstars jungle. Finished up a little, and got that much closer to Supernova. Less than 10,000 vpp's to go, so should be Supernova by the end of next week. It's a little bit scary in some ways because once I reach Supernova, and invested so much time at Pokerstars, I don't have a lot of incentive to play elsewhere. The overall bonus works out to be good enough at Pokerstars to not waste time transferring money and looking for bonuses at other sites. The problem is that I hate to be tied to one site and not get a bit of variety. Pokerstars has a lot going for them. They are reliable, good customer service, good traffic flow, good cashout times, fast software, and very secure. On the negative side my win rate at Pokerstars is lower than Full Tilt, Ipoker, or Ongame. When you take the vpp bonuses into account I think that I am still better off at Pokerstars for the time being. I've just got to keep working on pushing that win rate up.

Today's Topic: The quest for Supernova Elite.

Now that I am approaching Supernova, my mind has been wondering to next year and weather I could feasible achieve Supernova Elite and what it would be worth to me. Supernova Elite is Pokerstars top vpp status and the rewards for achieving it are substantial. Supernova only really took me a couple of months to achieve, as I have been spending most of my time on other sites this year. If I could achieve Supernova Elite it could be worth considering poker full time next year. Here are the sums:

What is Supernova Elite worth:

• 400% FPP bonus. This is a great bonus but in reality it would take me all year to achieve Supernova Elite so the FPP bonus would not kick in until 2009. Until then I would receive the Supernova FPP bonus of 250%
  
• Buyin's to 2 x $10,000 live events plus flight and accommodation. Worth $26,000 in total.
  
• WCOOP buyin. I'm not sure of the buyin amount but think it might be $1,000
  
• Milestone bonuses of $21,500 along the way, costing 250,000 fpp's
  
• To achieve Elite you need 1,000,000 vpp's which equates to 3,500,000 fpp's. less the 250,000 used for milestone bonuses. Using your fpp's to buy the cash bonus at a rate of $1500 per 100,000 would give you another $48,750 in bonuses.
  

This give you an amazing total of $97,250 in bonuses only, before you make a cent from playing poker for the year. This equate to $1870 in bonus money each week.

I would be playing either NL200 or NL400 to achieve the goal so if I only made 1BB/100 (pokertracker) then I would earn the following:

• Playing NL200 I average .52 vpp's per hand meaning I would need to play 1,923,077 hands for the year, earning me $76,923 in poker earnings.
  
• Playing NL400 I average .63 vpp's per hand meaning I would need to play 1,587,301 hands for the year, earning me $126,984 in poker earnings.
  

In summary total earning at NL200 would be $174,173, and at NL400 $224,234. That seems like a fairly acceptable figure to me, but is it achievable?

Here goes:

At Pokerstars the NL table's deal about 64 hands per hour. I play 9 tables at a time which equals about 575 per hour.

At NL200 I get about .52 vpp's for each hand I play so would need to play 1,923,077 hands for the year. Divided by 575 equals 3344 hours for the year. 64 hours per week. 10 hours per day (If playing 6 days per week). Playing 10 hours a day is not impossible but would be a huge ask, and would have to wear you down fairly quickly. The earn rate would be $52 per hour.

At NL400 I get about .63 vpp's for each hand I play so would need to play 1,587,301 hands for the year. Divided by 575 equals 2760 hours for the year. 53 hours per week. 9 hours per day (If playing 6 days per week). Again achievable, but a massive challenge. The earn rate would be $81 per hour.

If I devoted my entire year to this goal then it could be achieved. Unfortunately for me, I have played enough poker to realize that I couldn't sustain that amount of play without going stir-crazy. Also I am still playing NL100, and while I am confident playing NL200 at 9 tables, I don't know what success I would have 9 tabling NL400. So, while the dream is nice, I think my Supernova Elite aspirations might have to go on hold until 2009. I think I might look at what the 500,000 vpp pay rate would work out to; this might be a more achievable goal.

Today's link:

Today's link is yet another AHK script. If you ever wanted to play poker with just your keyboard this is the script for you. Pokerpad requires a full size keyboard, but keeps all your actions around the numeric keypad area. Check it out here.

 

 

Ship It

Just booked my biggest win in a cash game sessions this year. I just kept flopping the nuts, and the bluffers just kept pushing all-in. In one hand I had 66, call a raise along with 3 other players and flopped 2 more 6's for quads. I'm in middle position First raiser checks I check, 3 person bets, first person goes all in, I call and third person also calls. Easy triple up. Ship it.

Variance can sure take the fun out of poker when you are running bad, but when it is on your side it makes you feel like a poker god.

My strategy of buying in for only 60BB seems to be working. People are happier to push and call all-in when they are not putting their whole stack at risk. The only downside is that I have a rule of cashing out and rebuying at a new table for 60BB each time I double up. This can make for a lot of table hopping, and leaving some potentially profitable tables. I'll stick with it and let you know how I finish up at the end of the week.

I'm heading back to the tables to see if I can donk off all my days' winnings. Wish me luck!

Blogger tourney time

I took another thrashing on Pokerstars last night. It is starting to get a bit depressing. My new strategy of only buying in for 60BB worked well in theory. With a good hand and opponents on a suspected draw I was happy to push all my chips into the middle. The problem was they kept calling with their draws and kept hitting. I guess I'll just keep plugging away and let variance takes its course.

Signed up for the Pokerstars bloggers tournament which is being held on the 14^th October. If you have your own blog, click on the link below to sign up for free. It is basically a $40,000 bloggers freeroll so should be lots of fun. Hope to see you there.

Don't know how many of you follow rugby, but I was gutted to watch both the Wallabies and All Blacks get bundled out of the rugby world cup. How I wish I had some money on those matches, would have made a killing.

Today's Topic: 3 betting

3 betting is the name given to re-raising an original raise in poker. A couple of years ago 3 betting was relatively rare in low limit NL Holdem. People would usually only 3 bet if they had AA, KK or sometimes QQ, or it was a small stack re-raising all-in. This made it easy to get away from inferior hands, with the confidence of knowing that in general the 3 better was holding a very strong hand.

These days 3 betting is becoming a lot more common and is often used as a bluff, especially from late position. It makes NL Holdem a lot more difficult and with a standard 100BB buyin can easily put your entire chipstack in jeopardy. If you are playing a 100NL game and raise it up to $4 from middle position with AQ and a late position player 3 bets up to $12, if you call then there is a minimum of $25 in the pot. If a queen comes on the flop you are in a tricky spot and out of position. If you bet ¾ of the pot ($19) and get called and nothing dangerous comes on the turn then with $63 in the pot and only $70 left in your stack it can be a hard hand to get away from. At the same time top pair top kicker isn't the hand you always want to be committing your entire stack with, out of position, with an opponent who has shown strength. This is why the 3 bet from late position is such a powerful weapon.

I much prefer to be the one making the 3 bet from late position, rather than the one calling it. If I am in late position with AA – JJ or AK - AJ and there is action behind me I will nearly always 3 bet in this situation. This way I am representing a huge hand and will have position for the rest of the hand. The one thing to remember when 3 betting is that you have to price low pairs out of the pot. I f you are playing NL100 and get a $4 raise in front of you there is little point just raising it to $8, this will give most hands the right price to call you cheaply and bust you when they hit a set on the flop. If 3 betting in this situation you need to raise the pot to at least $14, with one caller behind you, to price them out of the pot. Often raising this much with AA will mean that you don't get any action, but it will pay off in the long run.

With NL Holdem becoming increasingly aggressive, you need to adjust for this with your play. By 3 betting more often from late position, you are making the decisions a lot tougher for your opponents.

Today's Link:

If you have your own blog sign up for the Pokerstars bloggers freeroll here. Look forward to playing you all on October 14^th.

Tough weekend

Hope everyone's luck was better than mine over the weekend. I'm back playing on Pokerstars, and I'm finding that players are just getting more and more aggressive. It puts you in the position of making some really tough decision on a regular basis and when 9 tabling it becomes hard work. What really gets me is when you make the right decision on numerous occasions and still get sucked out on. That's poker I guess. After such a bad start to the month I've got a lot of clawing back to do.

What I've decided to do for the rest of the week is to buy in for only 60BB rather than the maximum 100. I've found myself in a lot of situation lately facing a big bet on the turn, knowing that a larger bet is coming on the river. I've been unwilling to commit my whole stack to just top pair top kicker. I feel a lot more comfortable re-raising all-in in these situations when I'm only committing 60BB. I also want to start being more aggressive myself (fight fire with fire) and 3 betting more often with a wider range of hands. The problem with this strategy is that you can easily be forced to commit your whole stack before the end of a hand because of the large size of the pot. Again until I am more comfortable with a more aggressive style I am happier just committing 60BB at a time. I'll give it go for the week and let you all know how it works out for me.

Today's topic: Bet sizing by position

Another strategy I've implemented lately with a degree of success is sizing my opening bets based on my position. It's important in NL Holdem that the amount of your raise should not give away the strength of your hand. It is fine to vary your raises, but, before the flop, it is a good idea to vary them based on your position, not on your hand. In general raise in early position twice the blind. In middle position, three times the big blind. In late position, raise three and a half times the big blind.

The reasoning is:

Early position 2x the big blind: There are still plenty of people to act and if someone puts in a large re-raise I've committed very few chips to the pot and can get away from the hand easily. If I'm holding a monster then the 2 x raise can indicate weakness encouraging a re-raise, making it easy for me to 3 bet the pot. Being out of position for the rest of the hand also means that I don't always want to be building a large pot from early position, betting only 2 x the pot can help with this.

Middle position 3x the big blind: 3x is a fairly standard raise, so it makes it difficult for a player to put me on any hand if I make this standard raise from middle position.

Late position 3.5x the raise: In late position I am raising with a much larger range of hands, so I want to discourage the blinds from calling. If I do get a call I'm not worried as I will have position on the blinds, so will still have a good opportunity to win the hand.

If the table is playing particularly loose and I can't steal the blinds with a normal raise, then I'll tighten up my starting- hand requirements and make larger raises.

Today's link:

This link is not poker related, and a lot of people might already be using it, but I have only recently discovered igoogle. It is a customizable Google homepage which has some cool options.

It’s all good

Loaded up my backups onto the desktop last night and all my data seem to be fairly intact, which is good news. Played a bit of poker and lost a couple of hundred dollars to a collection of different draws. I hate it when you haven't played in a while and you start back with a negative day, but I guess that is all part and parcel. I'm hoping to play a lot of poker over the weekend so will report back with all my ups and downs on Monday. Got a few new topics that I want to get back into from Monday.

So have a good and profitable weekend all, and I look forward to getting back into it next week.

Home sweet home

Arrived back in Aussie last night. I live right on the beach and there is nothing better than getting up and going for an early morning dip, I really missed that. Good news on the laptop front, it looks like my travel insurance is going to pay out on it. So shopping time. I think I'll probably buy another dell, unless anyone has a better idea. My last dell had a 1920 X 1080 resolution 17" screen which I found acceptable for playing 9 tables when not at home with my big monitor.

I haven't really played any poker for almost 2 weeks (hard to play without a computer). I was planning on moving up to NL200 at the start of this month. I'll have to put this off for a couple of week until I get into the swing of it again. I find even after a few days off it can take a while to get the mind back into the whole poker thing.

I'm just setting up my old desktop computer, I'll load up all my old backups today and hopefully haven't lost to much data. So I'll be back playing poker from tomorrow, can't wait. It was actually nice to have a break from it, but I have missed playing.

No other news. I should be back with regular posts from here on.