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....

OK, what the EF? Do I need to say "I Can't" everytime to make something happen????

Earlier today, I said: "I can't seem to do well in the 90 player KO's"...

So, I thought I would try one more. And then this happened:

Bankroll is moving upwards... Yeah!

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...

Why do you play?

Waffles brought up an interesting point in this post. I am trying to build my bankroll but I really enjoy winning. So even though, I may lose money overall in an evening, I will take great delight in felting one particular person, or finishing 1st in a tournament (I hate finishing 2nd -sometimes I feel like I would rather go out first than finish 2nd). And I make way more money at my day job than I would ever risk making, playing online poker. So whatever I make at poker is just so I can move up a level, so I can lose faster when I take a bad beat (or donk it up), so I go back down a level and try to make more money so I can move up a level so I can lose faster so.......
Anyway, It's not to supplement my income. But will I hit a level where I could make enough to play to make money? Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong.

Why do you play?