January 4th 2012

So January 4th, back to the table grind that is SNG play. It started off very much like the days before, playing 4 tables of $3.50 games. I had adjusted my play and strategy based on previous days results but for some reason I kept on running up against the same old problems, people at this level just don't know how to fold! And that is the single biggest problem at this level, players don't understand how the SNG strategy works and how to make money, therefore a shove will be insta called by JQ off and will outdraw the A10 or what not that has been shoved with.

Well, after 15 games at the $3.50 I thought about what would increase my chances, so following my same Bankroll Management system I set up for myself, I decided I was going to play 2 $7 games at a time instead of 4 $3.50 games. Well let me tell you how this made all the difference in the world, it was night and day in terms of players skill and understanding of the game, and of course also helps when the better hand holds up, but what a difference. I will break it down like this:

I played 15 games at the $3.50 level and out of those 15 games I managed to cash in 4 of them =( which is only a 27% cashing rate which is well below my goal and what I will need in order to complete this challenge. So after making the decision to move up to the $7 games here is how it breaks down. I played a total of 20 $7 games and cashed in 13 of them. That is a 65% cashing rate, exactly what I would expect from myself and what I will need to achieve my goal.

Now to break it down so that you understand just how much I crushed the games today, my results for all 35 games I played are:

1st - 7
2nd - 7
3rd - 3

Now that's a total of 17 cashes out of 35 games, an average cashing rate of 49%. Which is back on target for my goal. To break it down even further, I started the day with a bankroll of $277 and turned that into $406. That makes my ROI for the day 67%!!!! That is a huge number and can you imagine I kept that same ROI through all the levels I moved up through, OMG it would take me no time, but that's unlikely and slightly far fetched, but hey I can dream can't I?

To top it off, today's one session at the $7 level was soo good that I made it onto the weeks SNG leader board and am currently ranked 20th overall for all the players on PokerStars this week at the Venus level which is $5 to $9.99.

Now, there is something that I do that helps me get back into a good rhythm when I have had a losing session, and this is a good tip for anyone reading this to help improve your game as well. So, what I like to do is search up the highest level turbo SNG that are being played while I am online, see who is playing in these games, sharkscope them and see their statistics. If I see someone that has played 1,000's of games and is making good money, I will stop and watch a game or two of theirs and see how they play it. By watching better players, or players that can demonstrate how to win, you will pick up good habits, and those combined with your own personal strategies should help improve your game and turn you into a winning player.

I was on the forum I am apart of and something was brought up that I would like to touch on here. So basically a person was brand new to the forum, introduced himself and stated he was a losing player overall and was hoping for help to try to turn things around and become a winning player. He stated his own problem first and foremost, and that is good that he recognized it. He stated the following, I start to play, win a little and start to play 12 games at a time, to which turns into losing, then tilts and there goes the bankroll.

You should by now if your reading this know how I feel about Bankroll Management and how it is crucial to playing online successfully for a long time. So great I thought, he has recognized the problem and is going to fix it by concentrating on 1 or 2 games at a times. However, he then went on to say that he is buying a HUD or Heads Up Display for those who aren't sure and Table Ninja software as well. Allow me to touch on this for a moment. HUD and Table Ninja are tools, and are very powerful in the hands of someone who can utilise what they have to offer. BUT, to someone who is still not a winning player yet, is an overload to the senses.

A HUD offers real time statistics of all kinds right beside the players name in the game you are playing. It becomes slightly overwhelming to have soo many numbers, acronyms and colours on your screen while you try to focus on your game. It then becomes an information overload, so much at once, and even with this information, if your fundamentals of how to win aren't there, they you will never fully learn how to utilise them. Table Ninja is a software that allows you to use hot keys to make bets, calls, folds, standard raise amount, continuation bets as well as easily buying in to multiple games at a time. It is a great tool for someone who can multi table more than 4 games at a time.

But that's just it, he is only doing 2 at a time right now. So let me help you all reading this by telling you, if you wanna be a winning player, do your research, there is lots of great free information online, and with the proper time spent reading and understanding what is out there it will exponentially increase your odds at the table. Then, by doing this and playing within a proper bankroll you can begin your poker journey to making money. Start off with the fundamentals of the game, start to learn to play winning poker, and then and only then can you add the tools to help you become better, like the saying always goes, gotta walk before you can run.

Good luck!

January 3rd, Day in review!

Today was not like the last 2 of the new year, it was back to reality and back to normal life. Had a busy day and only managed to get in 8 games this time, only 15% of the amount I managed to play yesterday! However cards managed to fall a little better for me today, still need some slight tweaking on my strategy for bubble play and taking down first but manage to turn things back around.

I managed to increase my bankroll from what I started the day with, still down so far but that is only because I had gone on the worst run of cards Ive had online to date yesterday. So for the 8 games I played, my results are as follows:

1st - 1
2nd - 1
3rd - 2

That is a cashing rate of 50% again and an ROI today of 22%. The numbers again are what I expect when I play and at these limits definitely need to make those higher but for the time being I am back in the positives for the day and moving up towards my goal. Well I will spend the night again re-thinking my sit n go strategy and re-evaluate my play and hopefully make some more changes for the better and try again tomorrow.

January 2nd 2012! Day in review!

So, how do I start to describe today? Well let me start with saying that I have never had a run like this in my online career yet, good or bad you ask? BAD!!! I have never had sooo many hands get beat when I go in with the better hands, AK getting beat by A2 hitting a set. JJ beat by AK, AK beat by Q10, 88 beat by J5, yes J5! Anyways, I am not going to go into depth about how bad I have been running today, instead focus on the opposite of that.

I have played extremely well today and can actually walk away from the computer for a short break happy with how I played! Happy with getting beat? Happy with not making any money? NO! Happy knowing that I have played solid, and each time I have lost, I got all my chips in the pot at the right time when I needed to, when I was ahead, and someone just happened to outdraw me. That's poker folks, however if you can continue to play solid poker like I have been, statistics dictate that you will come out ahead more than you lose. So that being sad, how do I handle losing soo much?

Well, the urge is there to go on tilt and just say F**k it, I'm playing any 2 cards if everyone else can win with them. But that never got anybody anywhere, except poorer faster. Its also very easy to start chasing losses and move up a level thinking that it won't happen to you there, you can't really run that bad the whole day can you? The answer is "YES." So what do I do now? I take a break, clear my head, know that I have been playing well up to this point and move on again after.

If I do what I have set out to do, and play within proper bankroll management, then I will never put my whole stack at risk, thus the importance of not tilting, not moving up in levels when you run bad and just ride it out until it gets better. A solid winning player is just that, and over the long run will win more than lose. The second day of my challenge and I'm already up against the fence but I will get through this, it is a year long challenge and I will treat it as such, not a race to get it done as fast as possible.

I have no doubt that if I keep going I will reach the target and reach it in a pretty reasonable amount of time.

So, for today's re-cap so far to this point! I have played a total of 33 games, and cashed in only 8 of those. That is a cashing rate of 24%, now that isn't the worst cashing rate ever, it could obviously be better but the part that needs improving on right now is in what position I cash. My cashes were as follows:

1st - 1
2nd - 1
3rd - 6

If I took even 3 of those 3rd place finishes and turned them into even a second let alone a win, my losses would not be nearly as bad. So it's break time now, I will be back grinding after and will post back my results at the end of the day again, or if I feel the need to vent my feelings again.

Okay it is now 7 pm, the end of my day of playing. I have the results for today as well as some analyzing of how I did. So I am down, I continued to have a disastrous day of bad bad bad beats everywhere. It was almost like if I shoved all in, it didn't matter what two cards called me, they were destined to win. So here is my final tally for the day. I played in a total of 55 games and only cashed in 17 of those games! It breaks down as follows:

1st - 3
2nd - 2
3rd - 12

Now the interesting thing about this is, if I were to take all those 3rd place finishes of mine, and just add a few first places and a cpl second I would actually be seeing profit even at 17-55 cashes. However the number that really bothers me that will require an adjustment of my bubble strategy  at this lower level stakes is the fact that I bubbled a lot.

4th - 6
5th - 8

Taking this into consideration, just making a few of those into third place finishes again moves me back into the profits again, however that wasn't the case today and will require a strategy change for the next day of gaming. How can it be that I play soo solid for soo many games, mind you sure there were some times I got my money in behind, and even more rare I came from behind to take a pot, but come out sooo far behind and run so bad? Like I said above that is poker, and that is another BIG reason i made this blog. To show the rest of these online players the ups and downs associated with playing these sit n go's online.

You have to be able to keep a level head, plan your strategy to take down these games, and evaluate it base on your results. So for my next days of playing I will be tweaking my strategy. I will have to make sure that when tangling with players who have larger stacks than me, that my chips are protected and do not take any more necessary risks than I have to. Also I will have to slow down my game once I am in the money as to not get knocked out in 3rd place and increase my profit margin and ROI.

So this being said, I am now down in my Bankroll from my original starting stack to a total of $271.66, so I am only down $28.34 which is not too bad after running soo bad, but it gives me a chance to work on the holes in my game.

Hopefully in the upcoming days, the better hand holds up and I can continue on to the next level of sit n gos within the week.

January 1st 2012 Results!

So today was the first day of my challenge and I managed to get in 16 games, 4 sets of 4. Playing at the $3.50 games I managed to cash in 8 of the 16 games I played in. So a cashing rate of 50%. My results in the cashes were as follows:

4 1st place finishes
2 2nd place finishes
2 3rd place finishes.

I managed a small profit of $30.34 for today. I have earned a ROI of 54% today. So for the first day of my challenge I am off to the races and doing well. Tomorrow I plan to get several more games than 16 in and should be able to increase my profit and hopefully hold up to a 50% cashing rate and maybe even increase my 54% ROI.

My Sit n Go challenge!

So.... After playing online poker for some time now, and being that it is the first day of 2012, I have decided to create a challenge for myself. To start off with a minimal bankroll and using proper bankroll management techniques, which I will describe, bankroll myself to $5,000 and chronicle the ups and downs of the time it took me to get there. By following this technique, there is no way for me to go broke because I will always be playing within a proper bankroll and will move up and down as good and bad swings happen.

So this is the challenge. I will start with an inital bankroll of $300 and using proper BM see how long it takes me to gain a bankroll of $5,000. Now the BM system that I will be using is this. For sit n go's it will be a minimum of 20 buy ins per level. So for example I will start out playing $3.50 turbo 9 man sit n gos. Therefore my starting bankroll should be no less than $70. However, for those of you like myself who are planning on multi tabling, this equation now changes. For each additional game you play at a given time, you need to multiply your bankroll requirements by the amount of games you will be playing. So for me, I plan to play 4 games at a time, so my bankroll requirements are as follows; $3.50 x 20 minimum buy ins = $70 x 4 games at a times = $280. So for me to multi table 4 $3.50 9 man sit n go's at a time I will need a minimum of $280 starting bankroll. This is where I got my $300 starting bankroll from.

So now that I have explained my challenge, I will be starting to post my bankroll after each day of play, the techniques I am using, the bad swings and good swings I have gone on and so forth. I will also take pictures and post on here to prove the games I am playing and the bankroll I am currently at. If you have questions, or comments on this challenge please feel free to ask and post. I will answer as many as I can. This is also the road for me to go professional in online poker.

See you on the e-felt!