So much for that

Yesterday was the big 100 game SnG challenge. I ended up playing 119 of them and learnt a couple of important lessons in the process.

I got off to a late start with the challenge due to a couple of unforeseen commitments. I was still determined to achieve my goal of playing 100 SnG's so decided to 9 table the $17 turbos to catch back up. Playing 9 tables is ok to start off with, but once you start getting down to the last 4 or 5 players it's easy to start making costly mistakes by not having enough time to make the correct decisions. I persevered with the 9 tables for about 30 SnG's hoping I would get used to it before realizing that I couldn't keep up. Lesson # 1: Don't play more tables than you can comfortably manage.

I then moved back to 6 tables for about 30 more $17 turbos before I decided that 7 tables was the perfect number for me. In this time I suffered a series of bad beats that I won't bore you with. For the next 20 games I thought that I'd have a go at the $27 turbos to try and get back a few of my loses (never a good idea). I did ok at the $27 turbos and the level of competition is only slightly higher than the $17's. I was still determined to hit the 100 mark, but was starting to get tired and lost a lot of focus, so returned to the $17 turbos. By this stage I was way to unfocused and started shoving chips in bad spots costing me more money. Lesson #2: Don't play when you are tired and lost focus.

I must have counted wrong, because I finished up playing 119 SnG's for the day. I obviously lost money, but am glad that I did it. I said that was what I was going to do for the day, and I did it. For anyone wanting a laugh here is my days spreadsheet:

As you can see I ended up $180 poorer for my efforts. Not the end of the world but it was a bit of a waste of time. I'm not sure what to do now. I wanted to play SnG's to have a break from the cash games, but yesterday seems to have got the desire for SnG's out of my system. Might play some MTT's today and see if I feel ready to go back to cash games tomorrow. Good luck at the tables all

I feel a big SnG day coming on

I've got the day off work, so my goal is to go hard at it and try and play 100 turbo SnG's for the day. I average 1 about every 6 minutes playing 7 tables so it will take me about 10 hours to complete. I'll have to break it into 3 three hour sessions. I don't normally like to play more than 5 hours in a day, but I'm really enjoying my SnG challenge and am in the mood. I'll give 9 tabling a go to see if I can speed up the process without impaction on my results to much.

I played a few last night, but ended up going out, so will make up for it today. I will post the results tomorrow. Wish my luck, Im sure I'll need it.

A guy on the 2 + 2 forums charted this graph of SBRugby's (one of the top online pros), full tilt poker results throughout this year. Check it out, this is one wild ride.

Today's Topic: So you want to go pro, part 2

For all you SnG players out there I thought I would do a spreadsheet of what you need to achieve to "go pro" playing SnG's. Again I am using Pokerstars for the figures, as I have played a lot of SnG's on there. Adding up the figures the bonus structure on Pokerstars is fairly average for SnG players, so you would probably be better off being a SnG pro on Full Tilt Poker. I am basing the figures on turbo SnG's as they are easier to multitable with mainly push or fold decisions involved a lot of the time. If playing 6 tables at once I seem to average one SnG every 7 minutes. I am basing the ROI figures on 14% for $16, 12% for $27, and 10% for $60, this seems to be the average for most pros. Obviously if you can play more than 6 tables at once then these figures can increase, but be aware that your ROI is likely to go down a bit at the same time.

I have included both the SnG and cash game spreadsheets to give a comparison.

As you can see it is quite feasible to become a online poker pro at relatively low levels and little risk if you dedicate yourself to learning the game. All you need is a very even temperament, the ability to concentrate for long periods of time, and a real love of poker, and there is always that hope that you might become the next world champion one day. If you are interested in obtaining the above goals my suggestion to start out at the low level SnG's, always keeping a bankroll of a minimum 100 buy-ins, and increase your multi-tabling up to 6 at a time. Keep detailed records and once you are beating that level for more than 14% ROI over 1000 SnG's, and have over 100 buy-ins for the next level, then move up. Good luck.

I've got to rush and start my SnG quest. Will give you the results tomorrow.

So you want to go pro

I started my SnG challenge last night. I started out just playing the $10 standards and $15 Turbos on Pokerstars, to get back into the SNG swing. It sure has been ages since I played a lot of SnGs so it might take a couple of days to get back into it. As promised I have listed my results below. I'll keep them updated each day while I play.


As you can see I played 35 SnG's last night for a profit of $41. Nothing startling but a good start and I sure had a lot of fun playing the things. I 9 tabled the $10 standards and 6 tabled the $15 turbos. I'm going to keep playing the $15 turbos tonight, hopefully getting up to 9 tables at once. If all goes well I will move up to the $27 turbos tomorrow. I have no desire to play SnG's long term but it should be a good change for a couple of weeks.

Today's Topic: So you want to go pro

A lot of people start out playing poker with the dream of one day going pro. While this is not an unrealistic goal, it is important to understand what level you need to be at to achieve it. Some people will play NL50 and have a great week winning $600 - $700, and think they are on their way to a new career. They don't understand that variance will claw back most of that $700 in the long run. Before considering going pro you need to have realistic goals and understand what commitment you will need to make to achieve it. The figures below offer a realistic look at what a good player can achieve playing online poker full time. While some people will be able to achieve higher win rates, the below figures are a realistic look at what the average grinders are doing.

• How many hours do you need to play: Until you can beat the higher stake games, to make money from online poker you need to grind out a lot of hands day after day. If you are looking at the long term it is unrealistic for most people to play focused poker for more than about 35 hours per week. This can consist of either 5 hours a day 7 days a week, 6 hours a day 6 days per week, or 7 hours a day 5 days per week.
  
• Amount of tables at a time: To make money at the lower stake games it is crucial to multi-table well. You need to be able to play a minimum of 6 tables at once and most good players will play 9. This will reduce variance and substantially increase your rakeback and bonus payments.
  
• How much money will you need to start with: I'll list the starting bankroll requirements with each level below.
  

The low limit cash game pro:

I'll base the figures on a 35 hour working week. I'll base the bonus structure on being Platinum level at pokerstars, I think that this will work out similar to receiving 27% rakeback at Full Tilt. The win rate I am basing it on is 2 PT(pokertracker) BB / 100. Looking over my Pokertracker database there is extremely few people achieving a win rate of over 2pt BB/ 100 who have played more than 10,000 hands. It is hard to achieve higher winning rates if you are grinding out 9 tables day after day, but with dedication and focus 2 pt BB / 100 is not hard to achieve for most average players. The amount of hands I am basing it on is 65 hands per table per hour, this seems to be close to what I average. Bankroll requirements are 20 buyins which is the absolute minimum. Annual $ earned is based on 50 weeks to allow for 2 weeks holiday per year.

As you can see, if you are able to multi-table then a fairly respectable living is able to be achieved at fairly low limit poker, with the hope of big earnings if you are able to move up to higher stakes successfully. You need to be aware that you will need to possess an extremely even temperament to deal with the variance and suck-outs of poker. You also have to love poker. Playing 9 tables of poker for 35 hours per week can become mind numbingly boring if you don't truly love the game.

If the above is something that you want to archive, then I suggest trying to multi-table 6 tables as soon as possible. Start at low limits and once you are beating that level for more than 2pt BB / 100 over 20,000 hands, keep moving up to the next level.

Tomorrow I'll look at what you need to do to achieve similar results playing Sit n Go's for a living.

Today's Link: Pokerweblogs.com

This is a great new site that rates a lot of poker blogs out there. If you own a blog get it listed, or if you enjoy reading blogs go take a look. My blog is listed in the most popular blogs, so if you enjoy reading this blog, please sign up and give my blog a good rating. Thank you.

Back to my roots

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I spent a lot of time down at the Indy track watching the car racing going on this weekend at the Gold Coast. I didn't play to much poker. The weather is starting to really heat up where I live in surfers paradise, and the lure of the beach and bars is a lot stronger than the lure of the poker tables for me at the moment.

Over the last few months I have been grinding out a ton of hands at the NL100 cash games. I haven't felt confident and ready to move up to the NL200 games yet, so things have started to get a bit boring continuing to grind away at NL100. The main reason I haven't moved to the NL200 games is that I don't feel mentally prepared to go through a large downswing. If I hit a bad patch initially at the NL200 games I could easily go down $2000 or $3000. While I realize that over the long term things would work out ok, I am not prepared to risk that sum of money currently. Once I start playing NL200, I have no interest in moving back down to NL100 if things run bad. That is why I want to be 100% ready and confident before making the move.

Because of this I feel like taking a couple of weeks break from the grind of NL100. I was thinking of playing tournaments for a couple of weeks, and still might, but even though I have won a few in the past, tourneys frustrate me. This is the last thing I need, so I am considering playing Sit'n'Gos for a couple of weeks for a nice change. It has been ages since I last played a SnG, but I did use to play a lot of them and looking up Sharkscope my last stint at them was fairly successful.

My goal would be to initially play 6 to 9 SnGs at a time playing maybe 30 to 40 a day for the next two weeks. My goal would be to have a ROI over 15% at the end of two weeks. As I said, it has been a long time since I last played SnG's so I might be a bit rusty, and I don't know how much the level of competition has improved over the last year. I'm not sure if Standard or Turbo SnG's are the best option (any comments would be appreciated), but will probably start with Standards. I am also deciding whether to play on Stars or Full Tilt (again comments appreciated), since I am having a break, Full Tilt might be a nice change as I play nearly all of my poker on Stars currently. I'll keep a daily update going on this blog to show how my challenge is coming along.

If you ever start to get a bit bored playing poker it is essential to change things up a bit to keep it interesting. Either play a different game for a while, or play on a different site for a change. I think you will be surprised what a difference it will make to your normal game and results when you move back to it. If you not excited about your poker and playing at 100% each and every time, your results will suffer. Good luck at the tables all.

Fun & games in the online poker world

I've been a bit busy caught up in the fun of the Indy festival here on the Gold Coast to be following all the goings on in the poker world this week, but having a quick look around the forums there are a couple of huge stories going on which are very interesting.

The first one is the Absolute Poker hole card scandal. There has been talk that someone has been using a supposed Super Account on AP to see everyone's hole-cards while playing. Accusations of this and other similar conspiracies are so frequent that not much credit is given to these claims. Absolute Poker denied the whole incident and carried on business as normal. Since then information has leaked out that there could well be a lot of truth to the Super user account and cheating claims. For a detailed recap of the incident and facts this is the best link that I have read naterem.com . Even after all this evidence coming to light Absolute Poker is still in complete denial mode, and the damage being done to both themselves and the online poker industry as a whole is multiplying on a daily basis. Absolute Poker at this stage really needs to come clean, be completely honest about the situation, and fix any problems or loopholes found.

The second story is that the winner of the World Championship of Online Poker's main event entered multiple accounts into the tournament. After reviewing the case Pokerstars agreed and stripped "THE VOID" of his WCOOP win and his $1.2 million prize money. For anyone who hasn't been following the story read more details at pocketfives.com.

What with these stories and everything else that has gone on with Online Poker over the last year or so, it really is bad news for online poker players. While regular online players are able to look at the above stories and realize that they do not compromise the integrity of online poker as a whole, new players and prospective players have yet another reason (as if they needed any more) to avoid online poker. New players are the lifeblood of online poker and fuel the whole online poker economy. Let's hope that the online poker sites can start getting together and generate some positive publicity in the near future.

Today's Topic: The Comitment Threshold:

One of the concepts that has helped my results the most of late is from the excellent book "Professional No-Limit Hold'em". I would recommend this book to any intermediate players wanting to take their game to next level.

The concept is that once you have or are going to but a certain amount of your stack into the middle, then you are committed to not folding at this stage. This strategy makes it a lot easier to know when to fold or go all-in with any given hand. The book states that if you have committed more than 10% of your stack (or your opponents stack if it is lower than yours) then the next bet or call that you are going to make in the hand is likely to take you over the commitment threshold. The commitment threshold is: Between you and each opponent, avoid putting in more than one-third of the smaller stack and then folding.

In practice, if for example you are playing in a NL100 game and both you and your opponent started the hand with $100. Before the flop you raise to $4 with AQ and get called by two people (4% of stack, $13 in pot). On a flop of A,J,7 you bet $10 and get called by one person (14% of stack, $33 in pot) you now have more than 10% of your stack in the pot so the next bet or call that you make will take you past the commitment threshold. Next card out is a 10. If you make another bet of $20 you will then have 34% of your stack in the middle and be committed to the hand. So your options would be to bet and be prepared to call an all in (Not ideal on the above board), check and hope your opponent doesn't bet, or bet only $15 into the pot keeping you below the commitment threshold (29%).

Using the commitment threshold concept really highlights the importance of playing in position and being able to act last. When you act last you can control the size of the pot and make decisions a lot easier. The secret to making this strategy work is to make your commitment plan before putting in one third of your money. Don't just call a large bet on the flop, look at your stack and decide that you now have a third of your money in the pot so you are going to call an all-in, even though you suspect you are beaten. Use the concept to not get into these positions.

There are a few exceptions to the one-third commitment rule which you can learn by buying the book, but in general if you make it your rule to not commit more than one third of your stack and then fold, then like me I suspect that you're No Limit Hold-em results will improve.

Cruisin along

Things are just cruising along on the poker front. Pokerstars has been looking out for me this week, not dealing out their usual barrage of bad beats. I'm hoping to move up to NL200 on the 1^st November. It's been a long time coming, and things are starting to get a bit boring hanging around at NL100 for so long. I could easily move up to the NL200 games tomorrow if I wanted, but I want to be at the top of my game and feeling 100% confident.

I've been doing a lot of poker reading lately. I realize that if I want to play above the NL200 level then my game will need to evolve. I find the playing fairly straight forward ABC poker is the easiest way to make money up to NL200. Beyond that I have a feeling that I'll have to start mixing it up a lot more. The book I have just started reading is "Master the mental game" by Alan Schoonmaker. I've only just started reading it, but so far very interesting, I'll give a full report of it when finished.

I'm also looking to sign up to cardrunners.com training site before the end of the month. The thing I am learning about poker is that unless you are constantly improving and moving up levels, it can start to become a very boring pastime, and motivation becomes a real problem. As long as my game is evolving and I am getting better and learning, then I really enjoy the challenge.

Today' Topic: Simplifying pot odds:

Most people reading this blog are probably already aware of the concept and use of accurately calculating pot odds. But it is such a vital part of being a profitable poker player that I thought I would just refresh the basics.

By definition, calculating pot odds are something that you do when deciding whether or not to call a bet. You compare the chances of the next card completing your hand to the # of bets in the pot. If the chances of hitting your hand are more than (or equal to) the number of bets in the pot, then you can call. If not, then you should fold. You SHOULD NOT use pot odds to talk yourself into marginal calls; rather you should use them to AVOID marginal calls.

The simplest way to calculate pot odds is by using the 4 times and 2 times rules. They state that on the flop your percentage chance of winning by the river is approx the number of outs times four. So if you have nine outs (flush draw), you have approx a 36 percent chance of winning. The four times rule can be off by a couple of percent, but the difference will rarely be enough to affect your decision. For instance the exact chance of catching one of your nine outs by the river is 35%. This is close enough and easy to calculate. The four times rule states your chance on the flop of winning by the river.

The two times rule gives you the chance of winning on the next card. Multiply your outs by two, and that's about your probability of being in the lead after one card only. If you have nine outs, that's about 18%.

One mistake that a lot of people make is that they use the 4 times rule when they should use the 2 times rule. If you are in late position and there is a raise and two callers before you and you call with QhJh, then if two low harts and an Ace come on the flop, and there is betting and a call before you then you need to use the two time rule rather than the four times rule. With action before you the odds that someone has at least a pair of aces is high, so it stands to reason that there will be further betting on the turn card and you will need to recalculate your pot odds again. Because of this you need to calculate your pot odds and implied odds of hitting your flush based on the turn card if you feel that further betting will occur at that stage.

Using the 4 times and two time rule when calculating pot odds simplifies calculating pot odds and makes it a lot easier to ensure that you are always making the correct call, fold, or raise.

 

 

So much for those plans

I planned on getting involved in some blogger tourney's over the weekend, but it was not to be. I started off with the final raisetheriver.com league game Saturday morning. Things were going well, but about 30 mins into the tourney strange noises and smoke started coming out of my computer. I quickly turned off the computer and upon opening the case found that the fan on the video card had stopped working. I hadn't used the computer in ages so a lot of dust had gathered inside and was causing the smoke. I had a spare video card so swapped it over, but by the time I found the video driver on the net the RTR tourney was over. I ended up in fifth which was a good effort for my half hours work.

Sunday was the Pokerstars bloggers tourney. Because I am in Australia the event was on at 5am Monday morning. This week is Indy car racing week in surfers paradise, where I live, so it's a fun week with heaps happening. Sunday night the "boogie pimps" were playing at a local nightclub. I got to the club about 10pm, but the "boogie pimps" didn't get on stage to about 1am. It was a great concert but I didn't get home until about 3am. I still planned on playing in the Pokerstars tourney as I have this week off. I set the alarm for 4.50am, but I didn't wake up until the alarm had been ringing for about 8 minutes. I raced to my computer fired up Pokerstars but by the time I found the tourney I was too late. So that was a waste of time and effort.

Apart from that the rest of my poker went fairly well over the weekend. I have started a new strategy that I will write about tomorrow which is working really well. It forces me to concentrate and focus more on my play. I find that lately poker has started to be about going through the motions for me. I am playing too much ABC poker and it is affecting my results. Now I am starting to push the action more and mix it up a bit. As well as improving my results it also makes playing a lot more enjoyable, so it's good all round.

I'm off to an Indy party tonight, so need to get an afternoon sleep in. I've got a few good topics this week so will get into it tomorrow.