Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Wow! What a cooler I am on. If you see me sitting at a table: jump in. You should be able to get a bunch of my chips no problem. My bankroll is down 60% in the last 4 weeks. Prior to that, I was on a serious heater, so I guess I can't complain too much. I just feel like I got whacked in the back of the head with a shovel, and a bunch of my bankroll flew out of my mouth.





This graph (from sharkscope.com) shows part of my decline. It does not include my MTT's which paid me nicely in August, but beat me up in September just as my SNG's did. The grey area is September.


I am trying to play through it. Lowering my buy-in's to protect my bankroll and just play through it. I have noticed that I have turned up my aggression and that is NOT GOOD for online play. At least, not to the level I am playing. TAG (tight aggressive) play is best for online poker IMO. I have been playing more LAG (loose aggressive) lately and it shows in my bankroll decline.

I am still up 3,650% for the year, so I can't complain too much. I just need to stop this slide on I'm on.

I hope the tables are treating you well. 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...

It's the New Style. Four and Three and Two and One...

I've been trying something new and it seems to be working. I found the 18 player $8.80 Tier One SNG's to be extremely easy. It's like the nightly Token Frenzy's but much quicker. Top 30% get paid (5 tokens and $14 to 6th). I mean really? How often can you get in the top 30%. You can almost fold your way there. I actually won a token in one that I saw 4 flops. FOUR!

Then, there are several $26 buyin tournaments that play just like the $3 KO's. The 45 player SNG's and the 90 player KO's. And of course there are plenty of guarantee tournaments and the most exciting and challenging of them all: THE MATH.

So you can see from sharkscope that I am hitting some of the $8.80 SNG's and then I took first in a 45 player $26 buy in SNG. It's nice to play in one of those for $8.80 and win $400+. I also hit another $3 90 player KO for 2nd place. Those are fun! For great tips on how to kill those, check out Matt's Blog.

Hope the tables are treating you right. I am excited to keep trying my new plan to build up my bankroll. Work will be kicking my ass for awhile. I opened my new branch on April 1st with 5 new employees. I have to hire 4 more in the next 2 months. Busy, busy, busy. I'll be trying to hit the BBT3 games when I can, hopefully Mondays and Wednesdays.

In the next couple of months I hope to get a new laptop and start posting specific hand histories again. I have to wait a couple of months because Hawkette just got me a new IPHONE. HELL YEAH! I love it! It is so freakin' Cool. I have wanted one for a year (or since they came out) and now I have it. It is awesome! Now if I can just download FTP onto my Iphone, I would be set...

Stay Patient.....

More self evaluation

I really need to keep self evaluating. I've been trying to play more by position than by the cards. I'm also learning to throw away more hands. For example, I'm holding JJ on the button and EP player raises, MP re-raises all in, I fold. EP shows AJ and MP shows A9 and the AJhigh wins it. But I don't mind. A few hands later I'm in the cutoff with JJ and get two limpers ahead of me, I shove and get one caller with AQ. I believe this is what they call fold equity? I'm not really sure as I haven't studied that yet. My Jacks held up. But more importantly, I'm learning to play less hands out of position.

I've folded a lot of AQ and even some AK's lately. It's helped as I have come off the big slide I had (look at the graph below), but I still have a lot of work to do to get back to the positive. I've cashed in 4 of the last 8 tournaments played in, and that is definitely good.

I don't want to say that I've tightened up completely, but I have when in early and middle positions. That has definitely helped keep me out of hands where TPWK gets killed.

Anyway, here are my stats from Sharkscope:

There was a huge slide down from around +150$ to -200$ that was mostly due to me trying to get cute and play $20 and $30 buyins. And don't get me wrong, I was playing horrible poker too at all the levels.

I think I can get back to positive by staying with my "Position-Playing" and by staying with the $5 and under limits. Once I can get back into the positive, I will start moving up levels. Although I feel like I can crack the $10 KO tourneys, but haven't succeeded in that yet...

Oh, and don't forget about the BBT3. I should be settled in my house enough to get into it starting next week. You gotta be playing in these events, if you are not yet...

And if you are an animal lover or you just want to play poker with a bunch of the Full Tilt Pros, go to Riggstad's blog and check out how to play in Jen Harmon's Private tournament on Sunday night.

I hope you are doing well at the tables.

Stay patient...

Pretty women out walking with Gorillas down my street

....because if my eyes don't deceive me there's something going wrong around here:

I got an instant message from a friend on Windows Live Messenger. It read like this: "Hey, is this picture really you? imageXX.JPG-www.photobucket.com" . I of course clicked it (LIKE AN IDIOT) and it ran a worm virus on my PC. What I then found out is "If you run the "imageXX.JPG-www.photobucket.com" file, the MSN Worm will be installed on your computer, and then separate to your MSN contacts and so on..." (from this website)

Luckily, there is no major damage. Unfortunately, the IT department in my company has required everyone to uninstall Windows and MSN messenger "until further notice". That didn't make me too popular -since the message sent by the IT Dept identified ME as the initial one to spread the virus. Which is true, but.... well, you know the shit I'm getting.

So my online bankroll is up to around $38. Quite a jump from being at $2 recently. I did violate one of my rules and play a $5 tournament, but it paid off as I expected it would. See below:

I have really struggled on the 90 player knockout SNG's. I can get through about half the field easily, most times even down to 3 tables, but then miss the money every time (I think I finished in the money once out of about 20 times played). I must be playing too loose in the middle.

You can also see that I have only played 4 tournaments in the last 7 days. Work and life are keeping me pretty busy.

I wanted to bring up one more time the comment I made about the horrible plays at the micro limits. Alan (and emptyman agreed) that they "will never support the theory of donkeys calling off their stacks as a huge dog being the reason that people can't beat those levels." I do agree with that. I guess I figured there would be more variance due to wider ranges of cards played against you. If you are disciplined and focused , then you should be able to win through those levels. I probably end up tilting so much, that I don't realize it when I had a bad beat push me way off my game.

Thanks for the comments.

15 days left until our BIG CHARITY TOURNAMENT. . .

Stay patient...

Building it back up

Warning. Super low stakes ahead. This is only for all you super-micro players. High rollers can skip this post.

Variance is a nasty ass bitch! That's why it is so nice when you slap her in the face. I mean really haul off and hit her good. I played my normal game last night and actually won! Yes. There's no whining post here about suck outs. My all in AK's held up against AJ and AQ. My Pocket-Rockets actually eliminated someone from a tournament. Oh, the beauty.

I played a $5 10 person SNG on Bodog and took 2nd. And then I played a 6 person SNG on Fulltiltpoker and finished 1st.

Sharkscope says I'm "HOT". That's because I have cashed in 3 straight SNG's. With an average profit of $3.55, I only need to cash in 51 more $2 SNG's to get back to even. I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I might have to write a book "How to get Sharkscope to label you HOT". Oh, the money is going to be pouring in now.

OK, OK. I jest. I guess this is what I have to do now though. Slowly build up a bankroll at the $2 level. Let's set a goal. What about $50? I have $11 now. I have the ability to play 4 more $2 tournaments. But I knocked Variance off of me and I am on top of her now. So, I build up to $50 and then I can play 8 $5 SNG's. We will set a new goal once I get there.

I hope you are moving in a positive direction as well. Stay patient...

Moving forward cautiously Part II

Thanks for the comments yesterday from WillWonka, OhCaptain and Riggs. Riggs was right in saying that I need to nail down the $5 level first and then move upwards. Same thing OhCaptain was getting at. I think another part of my problem is that I am more aggressive playing at the $5 levels (play my game). I play defensively more when I move up to the higher levels, just because it is out of my comfort zone. As Riggs pointed out: you can't play "defensively and with emotion". I've also been known to do the "aw-fawk-it" move and register for a $30 tourney to try to make a quick recoup of my losses at the $11 or $20 levels. That only increases the gravity pull on my bankroll even though I may occasionally cash in one of those.





This graph shows how drastically different my ROI is at the different levels. I think that says it all:








It seems the moral of the story is to play patient. Play my game, stay within my bankroll and get through the variance. There is a reason that AA is not 100% to win preflop against any other hand.





Part of my success in the blogger tournaments was my knowledge of how certain people play. Who was going to be aggressive and who was going to be tight. In the SNG's, there is a constant flow of new people. And, I think getting pokertracker back up and running will help somewhat when I do see the same opponents from time to time.





Any criticisms or suggestions are welcome.





Stay patient...





Oh and don't forget:




I doubt I make it out again tonight as I am feverishly working on getting my house ready to list for sale. Painting over writing on kids doors, patching holes kids put in walls, fixing screens dogs busted out, etc... Maybe I will be back in the blogger tourneys in within a couple of weeks. Good luck to everyone who makes it out there tonight.

Moving forward cautiously

First of all, thank you for the comments to my '07 recap. Every single comment made me feel really good. I hope to continue my learning this year and have a huge '08 recap.

Now let's get this over with. I am going to post something here that will make me feel like I am posting a picture of myself naked. Well, not that extreme, but almost as embarrassing. But I really need to look deep inside my poker game to find out what is wrong. Here are my SNG stats from Sharkscope:

First thing to notice is that I have not been consistent in either direction -well, until recently, consistently down. One of my problems I know of over the first 150 games was that I would build up from the $5 SNG's and then jump up to $11 or even $20 or $30 SNG's and lose back most of my profit quickly. Then I would settle back down and build up again from the $5 levels. I was not consistently winning enough at the $5 level to move up, but I would do it anyway and it always cost me.

But most alarming has been my stats over the last 70 games. I don't think you will see a graph like this posted anywhere else on a poker blog. Everyone wants to post how great they are doing and tell you why they run so goooot. But I need help. Serious help.

After about 25 games sliding downwards I usually tighten up and try to play ABC poker. After 50 games I become a rock. The last 20 games, I started limiting my plays to AA, KK, QQ and AK unless on the button or cutoff. And even in those positions, I played tight.

I could list all the hands I went out on, but what's the point? AK losing to 77. 77 losing to AK. Flush losing to boat. Could variance be this evil? I know I play aggressive at times, but lately have really tried to tighten up. My last 10 SNG's were all at the $2 buyin's 6 and 9 player tables. I did not cash 1 time. Really.

After finishing high in points over the BBT2 tournaments, I was starting to feel like I really progressed in 2007. But now I am beginning to wonder if I did luckbox my way into 4 final tables.

I mean, in 36% of the tournaments I played, I finished in the top 25% and half that time I made the final table. I only cashed 18% of the time, and managed to take 1st once. But wouldn't everyone like to cash in 18% of the tournaments they play in? Was I getting that lucky? My SNG stats are pointing to yes, the BBT2 was just luck. Or could variance be that strong. Granted, I have only logged 225 SNG's but now the last third of the games I have played has been a drastic downward spiral.

My goal now is to tighten up, play ABC poker and grind my way back to a profit and stay at the same level for awhile ($2 to start). Maybe then I can loosen up a bit. I don't know what else to do. Is there something else I am missing?

I need to get pokertracker set up on my new laptop. Maybe that will answer some questions. If you have any numbers on me that you could/would share from your stats, I would welcome them.

The nice thing is, I have a lot of room to improve this year. It surely can't get worse than the last 70 SNG's I have played.

Stay patient.....