Grinding it up

I am back playing at a highly confident level. I played in 9 tournaments this weekend and cashed in 3. I'll take a 30% ITM any day! My ROI was 212%. One of those 3 cashes was when I won a satellite that gave me entry to the Sunday 750K on FTP. It was so beautiful outside this weekend that I decided not to play and to keep the Tourney dollars. I am kind of torn about whether or not I should play in a tournament with a buy in that big. I know the nice thing is getting into a $216 buy in tournament for $8. Then again, that $216 will buy into a lot of tournaments if I'm playing at $26 or less for each one. Then I can continue grinding up my bankroll.

I decided to unregister from the FTOPS Event #7, following RaisingCayne's advice. I just wasn't comfortable playing a high stakes rebuy tournament right now. I am committing to grinding it out at the lower buy ins and I don't want to play something where I feel restricted right away because I don't want to do the rebuy or addon.

I am still thinking I will play in the FTOPS Event #9, $322 buy in event that I won for $75. I really want to take a shot at one FTOPS event this go around, even if I am going out of my bankroll comfort zone.

I was listening to Chris Moorman on a pocketfives' podcast. He made a great point about something that I had just figured out on my own (the expensive way). He was saying how many players will cash big in a tournament and then start playing over their heads and suddenly wipe out their bankroll 2 weeks later. You really need to have discipline with your bankroll management. He may cash for $60,000 but had just lost $40,000 over the last month. It's all relative, but a great player really focuses on their bankroll. Check out Chris' stats on Official Poker Rankings:

I had a hot run in August and September, but gave back almost half of it in October. But I was playing over my head. Instead of occasional $50+ buy in's, I was playing $75 -$200 buy in's and multi tabling them. That is simply too much for me. I have just recently gone back to focusing on smaller buy in tournaments, satellites, and SNG's. And I am multi-tabling less.

So if you are struggling, think about scaling back a bit. Play some smaller buy in tournaments. Also play some smaller fields. Like SNG's. There is not a much better ego boost than taking 1st place in a 9 or 18 player SNG. Just make sure you are managing that bankroll properly.

If you aren't listening to the poker podcasts available out there, you should be. There is some great content available at pokerroad, pocketfives, and even espn.

Stay patient....

No one can tell me that I'm doing wrong today

"whenever I see you smile at me" .. James Taylor

I'm finding the token frenzy's and Tier 1 SNG's where you get a $26 token to be quite easy on FTP. Hoy recently wrote a great post advocating playing the tournaments where payouts go to the top 30% and then using those payouts for buy-ins to bigger and/or better tournaments. I agree.

I also like the 45 player 26$ buy in SNG's. So I'm essentially getting into them for a discounted amount. How much of a discount?. Let's assume that I play 25 $8.70 SNG's and 12 $6.60 (some are $6.50 but we will round up). That's a total of $296.70 spent and I win 15 tokens which equals $390. That means I am actually spending $19.78 per $26 tournament I enter (296.70/15). That's a discount of 24%. Not too bad I'd say. My goal would be to win 1 out of every 2 tournaments I play which would be a discount of around 40%. That's extremely aggressive, but still a goal I will shoot for. See results below from officialpokerrankings.com


Of course, what really matters is what I do with those 15 tokens.

Breaking the numbers down even further, I find that I am only hitting a token 1 in 2.77 tries at the $8.70 buy-in. That is almost getting into -EV. 1 in 3 wins would be -EV by 10cents every 3 tries or a .4% loss. Of course I have won 3 out of the last 4 $8.70 SNG's, so I will assume I am getting better rather than hitting a good streak of variance (awfully vain of me, eh?). I need to break down the results in turbos versus non-turbos, but I'll save that for later.

And at the $6.50 buyin level, I am hitting a token 1 out of every 2 times I play. 4 of the 6 tokens won were in the 9:45CST frenzy's with 100+ players. Those are full of tons of loose players, so TAG play is rewarded. I can't play those any 'ol time like I can the 18 player SNG's, but they sure are nice. Wouldn't you like to cash almost 60% of the time you play? HA HA HA.

I've cashed in 2 of the 10 $26 buy ins I have played. I've played a few different sized tournaments but the 2 I cashed in were 45 player SNG's (1st and 4th) paying out $518 for $197 invested. 160% profit is pretty nice.

So that's a synopsis of what I'm doing right now and what is keeping my bankroll moving upwards (like the 30 year mortgage rates or the real estate values in Toronto -ok maybe not that much). You get the idea. Let me know what's working for you.

In the meantime check out this "may the felt fold bald texan" and this "presto is gold".

Stay patient....

If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

Yayyyyyyy! It's Friday! What a week. My second week in management and I was TOLD to fire someone. "Welcome to my new branch. Your Fired!" That was fun. It was inevitable, so I did it right away and got it over with. Welcome to management.

Friday means "Friday night poker at FTP". Last Friday night was very good to me when I hit a 2nd place 90 player $3 KO and a 1st place 45 player $26 SNG. Let's hope I can repeat. I have been trying to stockpile tokens this week and now have 6 $26 tokens. I'll probably play at least 2 45 player SNG's and maybe a big MTT with those tonight.

Check out this freaky graph (from sharkscope). The 1st place 45 player SNG really skewed my winnings. In a good way of course. My bankroll is now up 150% since I reloaded in February. This graph doesn't show some of my other MTT winnings that are not SNG's.
Now here is one I don't understand completely (from www.officialpokerrankings.com). I was sitting at a 65percentile forever and then within the last week I jumped to the 90's. I was thinking I would slowly move upwards as I progressed and since I just made a huge jump, it makes me think this site really means nothing. I don't know. Any thoughts???

And lastly, here is my 2cents on the whole "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM" issue. A couple of people (and probably more) have complained that only "ass-clowns" type "BOOOM" into the chat box and that you could never do that in a live game. Well NO SHIT!!!! I don't want to do it in a live game. I don't have buddydank playing in my ear during a live game. I don't know most of the players in a 70+person MTT live game. If I play a live game, I take it way more seriously than online low buy in MTT's.

I play in the blogger games for a specific reason. Because of familiarity. Getting to know people with similar interests (sicknesses) as me. And I want to give them SHIT and I want to scream at them and I want to congratulate them and I want to joke around with them. It's a freakin' $10 or $26 buy in game. It's just for the fun of it; for the competition of it; and for the entertainment of it. One of the most fun evenings I had playing was a night where Chad was drunk (by his admission) and we typed back and forth a hundred insults of aidsizzzzzisms. Who cares what is in the chat??? If you don't like it TURN IT OFF!

I think it is hilarious when people rail for each other AND against each other. Bring it on! Make it fun. If it is too offensive the FTP police will get you. Until then: BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!

Stay patient...