Some thoughts on my game with some results… May 2, 2009

Now that I’m not working I’ve been playing poker pretty much all day every day lol.  Okay not really but I usually have a session in the afternoon and then another one late evening.  Okay, so all day every day lol.

Anyway, I’ve been playing on ft because of the challenges I’ve been doing.  A few days ago I was reviewing my play from recent times and decided that I thought I was on my game and playing well.  I decided to deposit a little more money on ft so I could stop playing $1 and $2 tournaments (unless there was one I wanted to play) and play a little higher (I’m big on bankroll management).  So off I went depositing more money and then went off to play in my favorite $6 turbo nlhe stts that I used to play when I did have a bankroll on ft.  I soon found my bankroll severely lacking hahahahaha.  In the first two days I lost over 1/2 of what I deposited (insert D’oh here).

Soooo, off I went reviewing my notes, blogs, journal again.  I started noticing that I did well in multi-table satellites (either sngs or mtts) and I also did well in multi-table sngs.  Sooooo off I went to start plugging away at all of the above lol.  Slowly I started regrowing the bankroll I’d lost.  I won some money in some satellites (missed the seats but won some money so okay).  Funny enough all the satellites I chose to play were $1.50 or under lol…so much for needing to deposit more money (D’oh).

I decided to try a few $3 ninety player ko nlhe deepstack turbo sngs (yep say that one fast lol).  I used to do pretty well at these and usually if I made the money I’d get into the top 4 or 5 where the money was better.  The first one I tried, went out 3 before the money…second one I tried, went out 3 before the money pfffft.  Third one I tried, won 4 bounties and came in 2nd (yay).  I ended my night like that happy to have gotten back a good chunk of what I’d been losing. (see blog about this below)

Next day, tried a couple of them and one I went out three before the money (hahahahahaha).  I started realizing though that this was a good format for me.  I may not get in the money every time but I almost always won some bounties before going out and I was getting very close to the cash almost every time so I knew I was capable.  I think it is the fact that it is deepstack and when it is multi anything my patience tends to come out to play.  Last one I played last night I collected 4 bounties and went out in 4th place for a decent cash to add a bit  more back to my bankroll.

Tried one again today and went out about 20th or so but not discouraged.  I saw a satellite starting for the $200k double deuce.  It was $.75 + .15 to enter and first got a $20 + 2 seat and 2nd and 3rd got a little bit of cash.  It was a 36 player sng and was 6-handed and a shootout to boot.  No pressure there hahahaha.  I had just been saying to hubby last night that I didn’t feel I did well at shootouts.  It is so hard to come in first on your table multiple times.  Not one to shy away from a challenge though I started plugging away at the first table.

What always happens when I am involved in either a heads up match or a shootout match is my table is almost always one of the last tables to finish.  That was the case with my first table.  By the time I’d won my first table, every other table was done and waiting for me.  The last match started with 6 people so three to the money and 5 to the seat.  We started back with 1500 chips and 15/30 blinds.  The first two people went out quick, one at my hand and one at anothers.  Once we got into the money the short stack soon went out leaving me heads up.  I get in this heads up situation a lot where the prize is a seat and 2nd is a little bit of points/cash and much of the time I end up with the points/cash.

This time I just wore him down and I ended up with the $20+2 seat.  I was very proud of this win, I turned .90 into $22 in tournament dollars.  Yep, tournament dollars as I actually won’t be home tomorrow to play in the tournament.  I just wanted the shootout practice and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. On top of it all with the tournament dollars it’s brought my bankroll back up to where I started with my last deposit.  Now I can go back to trying to build my bankroll using my new thoughts about playing only multi table sngs/mtts both cash and satellites.

It’s like a roller coaster ride… May 1, 2009

The last couple of days on Fulltilt have been like a freaking roller coaster ride.  I decided to deposit a little more money on ft so that I could play higher limits as I’ve felt that although I’ve not been running well my play has been on and I was interested to see how I’d do playing in the next buy-in’s up.  Instead of $1 and $2 tournaments I decided to try $3, $5, and $6 ones.

It started out not so well…the first 9 tournaments I tried I only cashed in one and that was a 3rd place finish in an stt.  I was ready to throw in the towel but hubby wouldn’t let me.  He said just keep playing and eventually it will work out for you.

I ended yesterday down about $60 from my new deposit and was heartbroken but determined to try again today.  Again it started off not so great with the first 3 things I played in, no cashes.  The next tournament I tried was an omaha h/l satellite for a mini ftops.    It cost $1.50 and top 5 got a seat and 6th and 7th got cash.  I was chip leader with 12 players left and then I made a donkey move and lost most of my chips and ended up going out in 7th place and winning $5.75 with bounties instead of winning a $24+2 seat.

I tried another mini ftops satellite and went out 4 before the money, sigh.  This time I got it in with the best hand and got 2 outed, nothing you can do about that.   I then tried five $6 turbo nlhe stts and only cashed in one of them, $16.20 for a 2nd place finish.

I’ve also been trying the 90 player nlhe deepstack turbo ko sngs (say that ten times fast lol).  I used to do very well in these and was looking forward to trying them again.   I tried a $6 one and went out about half way through.  I tried two $3 ones and finished in 12th in both of them, missing the cash by three people but winning some bounties to make up the difference.  The last one I played was very interesting and quite a roller coaster ride.  I was determined to cash in this one.  I had AA twice, once I got all my money in just to find out I was up against…AA, sigh.  The second time I doubled through the person.  I ended up finishing in 2nd place after the turd burgular outdrew me when he called my A8 suited all-in with K7 off and hit a 7, sigh.  Overall I’m very happy to have cashed and it brought quite a bit of my lost money from the day before back into the fold.

I just need to get used to not playing $1 and $2 tournaments anymore and gaining back my confidence so I can keep moving up in levels.

Tuesday night poker on ft… April 29, 2009

I haven’t had much to write about in the last week.  I haven’t been running well and I’ve not increased my bankroll which means I’ve not completed another challenge.  I’ve just kind of been going back and forth, winning a few dollars…losing a few dollars and not having any excitement happen.

I didn’t play yesterday so decided to make an evening of it today.  I started with a couple of small buy-in satellites and did much of nothing.  I tried two $2 nlhe stts and came in 2nd in one and nothing in the other.

I played in a $.50 +.10 rebuy satellite for a seat in a $10 rebuy mini tops mtt.  I didn’t want the seat since it’s a rebuy tournament, I wanted to win the tournament dollars which would total $11 with the rake.  I rebought right away and added on as well and ended up winning $11 tournament dollars for a $1.60 investment as well as completed part of an ftops challenge they are running.

At the same time I also decided to spend 200 ft points and play in the daily dollar.  I love the fact that I can use my points to buy in to it.  It once again did not reach the 10k guarantee mark as ONLY 7018 entered haha.  After a couple of well timed double ups and well timed suckouts, I ended finishing the tournament in 268th place winning $5 for my 200 point investment.

I’m very happy with the day, I felt like I made a little progress with my bankroll and thought I played well and luck was mostly on my side when I needed it to be.

$2 nlhe turbo stts…many of them April 21, 2009

…17 to be exact.  That’s how many I played tonight in my effort to increase my bankroll by 25% which is one of the tasks in the bankroll management challenge I’ve been working on through the “ft poker academy”.  At lower limits this truly proves to be a difficult task but in order to complete the challenge you need to be using bankroll management which means I need to stay at the $2 limit for now.

Playing that many stts in an evening, you definitely come across some wacky play.  I don’t know how many times I saw AA preflop being limped with and then watching person after person move in on the flop only to come across the fact that they’ve been outdrawn on the flop.  In fact I had QJ suited in my sb one hand and there was only one early position limper and me and the bb.  The flop came QJ3 rainbow and I bet out 2/3rds of the pot only to be raised all in by the ep limper who had AA.  The turn came with a 4 and the river with another 4 and I was out of there due to a very poorly played hand that turned out in their favor.

I also went out with AA a few times with the worst being me re-raising preflop from 100 to 1100 (after 4 limpers with me only have 11x the bb) to get called by someone with 1000 chips who had 35 and watching them hit a 5 high flush on the river haha.   My favorite hand played out tonight that I saw was one I wasn’t even in.   AdKc vs QhQc…flop comes KhJc8c, turn is Tc, and river is 9c giving the QQ a straight flush vs. the AK’s king high flush when he had the hand the whole way (limped preflop and money went in on flop when QQ was behind haha).

Overall out of the seventeen $2 nlhe turbo stts that I played, I cashed in 8 of them with no first place cashes (sigh), five 2nd place cashes, and three 3rd place cashes.  For all my hard work I lost .45 for my time HAHAHAHAHAHA.  I guess I’ll have to save increasing my bankroll for another session.   With all those games played and not coming in first once I am never going to complain about virtually breaking even.

Sunday poker 4/19/09… April 20, 2009

So not every day can be the best poker day.  I was going to go play in a HORSE mtt today at Seabrook Poker but decided to spend the day shopping in Boston with hubby.  I still haven’t figured out if I made the right decision but based on tonight’s venture into online poker I’m thinking maybe today was probably not my day.

It’s not that I’ve lost a ton of money this evening, in fact I pretty much broke even,  it’s just that my play isn’t 100% and my luck is far from 100%.  I started out on full tilt (remember me and my challenges lol) with a couple satellites.  I wanted to play in the daily dollar again as I needed to complete an mtt task for the bankroll management challenge and I’d prefer to satellite in (cheap skate from heck haha).  I played in a 50 pt stt and quickly won my seat, yay.  I also played in a multi-satellite for one of the mini ftops and made it about 2/3rds of the way through the field before going bonehead and donking off my chips.

I played in the daily dollar and although I met my requirement for my challenge I didn’t make it very far through the field and went out around 5500 out of 7500.  I moved on to working towards my cash game task and got nowhere except to lose five or so dollars and get frustrated in the process.  I’ll save those tasks for a later day when I am in the right cash game mindset.

I decided to work on the “pro play challenge” which is growing my bankroll by 25% so I decided to try a matrix sng.  I did okay coming in 4th overall and making a little money.  I decided to try another one and came in 2nd overall and making a little bit more money.   I ended my night by playing in two $2 nlhe turbo stts and finished 2nd in one and 3rd in the other.

Something was just off in my poker day and I need to take some time to mull it over.  I’m realizing that the last two parts of my bankroll management challenge or going to prove to be just that…challenging.  I’m looking forward to figuring that puzzle out.

I guess I’m done with my doyle challenge April 18, 2009

Just a quick blog to say that I’ll be deleting that category as I logged on last week start working on my .10 stt Doyle’s challenge again and found that they no longer had the .10 stts which is just too bad as I only have $1.89 in my account so only have one chance at a stt as the smallest one I found was for a $1 plus rake.

They do have freerolls for all us old Victory poker players though so I will participate in those when I have a chance.  Beyond that you probably won’t see me write much about Doyle’s room anymore.

Completed my 3rd ft challenge, just a small one April 18, 2009

A new challenge popped up to try the other day and even though it was small and very basic I decided to add it to my list of challenges to complete.  It was called “The Guide to SNG’s” by Phil Gordon and consisted of 3 tasks.

1) Play one 9-handed sng that is not a turbo

Okay, this was actually a challenge for me.  Nothing irritates me more than a non-turbo sng.  They take so long for a little bit of money.  Since it was step one of the challenge though off I went and played a non-turbo sng.  I played a $1 one hoping it would go quicker (give me a break here haha) and the thing lasted an hour and ten minutes.  I did my best to follow the suggestions from the past two challenges and ended up finishing 2nd.  We only played one heads up hand…I had AT vs. his Q6 and the flop came QQA sigh…you can just guess how that turned out lol.

2)  Play one 9-handed turbo sng.

Well this was easy for me as I normally play turbo sngs…I finished 5th though but I was fine with that as you can’t win them all.

3) The Pro Play:  Play one sng that serves as a satellite to a larger tournament.

This one was a little different for me as I normally don’t play sngs that are satellites.  If I play a satellite it’s usually an mtt.  I had a hard time finding one that was within my bankroll management limits (remember I’m strict about that) so I ended up playing in a $1.80 + .20 one that paid three $5.50 seats.  I found I had to adjust my game quite a bit but I’m happy to say I ended up with one of the seats which I quickly changed in for tournament dollars.

This was pretty much the easiest challenge you’ll find on there, worth only 30 points but as with the other challenges I took it for all it was worth and used it to learn something new about me and my game.  My next challenge is “bankroll management” and I’m terrified of the pro play on that one which is increase your bankroll by 25%.  I think I may be working at this challenge for a while lol.

Completed my 2nd ft challenge…”Mastering the Bubble” April 17, 2009

This challenge was actually much harder for me than the first one.  The first one I completed in 28 sngs and this one took me 51 sngs to complete it.  This one was comprised of 5 tasks with some of the tasks needing to be completed multiple times.

They were:

1) Pre flop fold A X (where the “X” is 8 or lower) while 4 handed in a 9 handed NLHE sng that pays 3 spots.

This one took me a while.  I’d get down to 4 players and then not get dealt Ax haha, this was the 2nd to last task I completed.  I only had to complete this task once so thank goodness for small blessings lol.

2) Move or call all in pre flop with Kx or Qx (where the “x” is 9 or lower) while 3 handed in a 9 handed NLHE sng that pays 3 spots.

This was actually the first task I completed.  I moved in with Q4 and won the blinds…very easy task.

3) Play 4 heads up NLHE sngs.

This was the 2nd task I completed.  I played 4 of them in a row.  I chose to do one at a time as you definitely need complete concentration when playing heads up.  I won 3 out of the 4 heads up matches so I was very happy with how this task went.

4) Cash in five 9-handed NLHE sngs that pay 3 spots.

This took me 18 sngs to do.  I went on a really bad run of cards and lost 6 in a row without a single cash and then each of the other cashes had a few non-cashes in between.  This task and the next task is what took me so long to finish this challenge.

5) The Pro Play:  Win three 9 handed NLHE sngs.

This one took me a total of 51 sngs (minus the 4 heads up matches) to finish since this challenge is obviously the challenge that you are working towards from the beginning.  I won a sng within the first 4 I played towards this challenge and then I didn’t win another one for 25 sngs, it was very frustrating.  In all my sngs I had six 2nd place finishes where I could have won and completed the task but I was running so horrible heads up.

All in all I am glad I completed the challenge but it definitely was a very frustrating one to me.  What I continue to love most about these challenges is the pro’s reasoning behind each task in the challenge.  It leaves me coming away from each session with something learned even if that day wasn’t a winning one.  I only had 15 cashes out of the 51 sngs which was disappointing for me and unusual as well.  I’m normally about a 50/50 when it comes to cashing in sngs.  I had 9 bubble finishes during the 47 nine-handed sngs I played which is a better average for me so I guess I learned something about “mastering the bubble” after all.

Bitterly disappointed, sigh April 14, 2009

Was working on my second challenge and saw the daily dollar mtt on ft had started but was accepting late registration so decided to join.  It ended up costing me 200 pts (didn’t know paying in points for this was an option until I did) and there were 5954 players and the guaranteed prize pool was 10k so paying 200 pts was a very good deal.  I doubled up the first hand I played when my pocket kings beat out pocket 8’s.  I didn’t look back from there (until I went out of course lol).

I had pocket pair after pocket pair and connected with about every flop.  I cruised into the money and through the first few money breaks.  We were starting to come up on the better payouts when I was dealt pocket kings in my bb.  I had double the average stack and was the big stack at the table.  There were 5 limpers including the sb and I raised to 17.5k (blinds were 1200/2400) and got one caller.  Flop was ten high and he checked to me and I bet enough to set him in and he of course obliged me with a call with his set of 7’s, sigh.

This crippled me down to 12x the bb and I toiled away until I only had 8x the bb and moved in with AQ and won the blinds and antes.  I won another small pot and was back up to 34k.  I had AT suited on the button with only one other player in (besides the blinds)and I raised and he called, blinds folded.  Flop came rainbow and ten high and he checked and I moved in for the last of my chips and he obliged me with a call with his set of 4’s (insert sigh here).

Instead of cruising in to the good payout area I went out in 241st place for a whopping $5.  I know I did nothing wrong, it’s actually one mtt I can say I made no glaring mistakes that I can think of but all my luck came in the first 3 hours and petered in the last hour or so.  I played my heart out for 4 hours, made it through thousands of players, and turned 200 points into $5 but I can honestly say my heart broke on that one.

I’m glad the next two days I’ll be busy with the end of tax season and won’t have a chance to do much playing.  I think my poor broke-down heart can use a break and reality check lol.

Finished my first “FT Poker Academy” challenge… April 12, 2009

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I have been utilizing the FT Poker Academy and decided to try to complete each of the challenges they are offering.  In return for completing challenges you get a set amount of points that you can spend in the soon to be opening academy store.

I started with the “Sit & Go by the Numbers” challenge put on by Aaron Bartley which offered 200 points for completing all the tasks.  There were 5 tasks in the challenge and some of the tasks were multiples meaning you had to finish that certain task a set amount of times.  Since part of the challenge was to play five sng’s with the buy-in not being more than 2% of your bankroll, this left me needing to play $1 stts to be sure not to dip below that 2% mark.  This made it an equally hard task as the $1 stts can be very trying at times to me with their wild nature.

It took me 28 sng’s to complete the whole challenge with the last 10-15 stts only needing to finish the “pro play challenge” part which was to win 2 9-handed sngs.  I won one within the first 7 sng’s and then it took me until the 28th sng to win another one.  Very frustrating but absolutely rewarding when I did win it.

I found my stats for the $1 stts quite improved during this process.   I normally don’t cash well in these and I cashed in 13 out of 28 sngs with a small loss of $4.40 which were attributed to a number of bubble finishes, 9 to be exact.  This brings me to the next challenge on the ft poker academy…”Mastering the Bubble” by Howard Lederer.  I had planned on going with “Bankroll Management” by Chris Ferguson next but after looking over my statistics and seeing the number of bubble finishes that I had I decided that Howard’s challenge was the next logical choice.

I really encourage anyone looking to improve their game to look in to trying these challenges.  I found the first one to be informative and I feel as if I’ve taken a positive step in my game with me from completing it.

Just to give a little sample of some of the tasks I had to complete for the sng one…

-don’t finish in the bottom 3 of four 9-handed sngs that pay 3 spots.

-Fold A-J, A-T, A-9, K-Q, or K-J in early position 2 times while there are 7 players left in a 9-handed sng.

-Go all-in with A-Q, A-J, or A-T while five or six players remain in a 9-handed sng.

-Play five sngs; your buy-in for each can be no more than 2% of your ft bankroll.

-”pro play”…finish in first place in two 9-handed sngs.