Focus on the last game as if it was the first...

Well, lots of fun in real life since the previous update. A couple weeks back was the Lewisham league AGM in the evening; I spent all of Thursday in the pub with H2, and got nicely tipsy on several pints of a lovely real ale before we went to the meeting, generally haranguing anyone within earshot. Then that Saturday was Tim's 30th drinkies, so that was good. Crashed at theirs overnight and watched the Merseyside derby on the Sunday afternoon, which Everton won 2-0 and should have won by more. In twenty-five plus years I don't recall watching a more awful performance by a Liverpool team; it was pretty sad to watch really.

Then last Thursday H2 and I shared a free lunch at the new Giraffe in Blackheath, and for the second week in a row we spent the afternoon in a pub in Blackheath, before turning up late to bowl slightly tipsy; H1 was not amused at our drunkaments when we lost the over all by just a single pin for a 10-7 loss. We thought it was pretty funny as we stumbled home though :-)

Last weekend was pretty good too, went up to Liverpool for the weekend, avoided the mice at Tina's parents' house, had a nice meal and a couple of drinkies in Gusto at Albert Dock on Saturday night, then on Sunday was the visit to Anfield for the Liverpool-Blackburn game. That was great, I'd always wanted to go to Anfield, and it was pretty awesome listening to Kop in full voice for "You'll Never Walk Alone".

So anyway, what about the pokers? Well, like always I've been pretty lazy throughout the month with regard to volume, and having made a sort of goal of making Platinum in October, six days before the end of the month I found myself over 1,650 VPP short of even retaining Gold. So I decided that enough was enough and I'd make Gold come what may.

So on Tuesday I sat myself down and, full of good intentions and mixing 2/180s and 12/180s with a handful of scheduled MTTs, I ground out a shade over 400 VPP for the day, but lost over $200 in the process, most of that from a tough day in the 12s – only 4 cashes in 59 games. The day was only just about saved from disaster thanks to a pretty deep run in an $11 turboament from the schedule, getting to 25th out of over 3500 runners, which was worth about $90. I've had a few "nearly" runs in scheduled tourneys lately, I think it's about time I FT'd another one or two of those and made a decent score. I think that's gonna be one of my November goals, fighting my way through thousands for an FT appearance in an MTT from the schedule.

So anyway, that was that day done. I found a whole bunch of useless excuses not to play at all on Wednesday, and Thursday I justified to myself that I was bowling in the evening so I wouldn't have enough time to make it worth while starting a session that I'd have to cut short, so no games that day either. Well, turns out I should probably have played poker anyway, because the bowling was an absolute disaster – a hopelessly pathetic 436 set; even if the lanes were atrocious that's still not even close to good enough. I probably should have got drunk beforehand for the third week in a row instead of bowling sober!

So Friday comes round and once again I decide that, three days left, 1250 VPP needed, and I'm gonna go for it. So I fire up the games and play moderately decent poker, again mixing 2s, 12s and scheduled; as I go through the session I realise that I'm not playing great, more like I'm just going through the motions, so I really try to tighten up my game. I remember shipping a 12 somewhere in the middle of it all, but wasn't really paying attention to how I was running over all, and it was only as I wound down my last couple of games and checked the cashier that I realised that I was actually up over a grand in profit for the day!!! I was like "Holy F***, how did that happen?" If someone had asked me to hazard a guess without checking my balance, I might have gone for maybe up a couple of hundred because of shipping one, but somewhere in the middle of all that I must have been running pretty decent without noticing. I reviewed a few of my games after the session and I really did get some great cards in some crucial spots, QQ+/AK all over the place just when I needed them. Hey, I'll take it while it lasts, I have to put up with some pretty horrendous runs of bad cards and bad beats too, so it all evens out in the end. So I had $1,179 profit from 12s, but with 2s and scheduled that dropped down to about $1,127 total profit for the day. Pretty nice!!! I also got in another 370-odd VPP, leaving me around 880 short of Gold with two days left to go.

And so on to today. I decided that as I'm gonna get this Gold, I'd like to break the back of it today. So I started and kept on through all the bad beats, and after 4 hours or so I stopped regging for 2s to focus exclusively on the 12s. I figured that on a Saturday, going into evening, there would be enough games going off to keep a full load of tables. But despite regging for every single one which started I struggled to keep more than ten tables going, and quite a lot of the time I didn't have any games above BB250. I was playing a lot better than much of yesterday yet I really was running heroically bad, about as bad as during the games when I was selling action late last month. I finally reached a point, after 7 hours, where I had simply had enough of it. It had been two hours since I'd even had a cash. Somewhere I'd had a 35k stack in one, with only 25 left and yet thanks to some retarded pots I didn't even make cash, bubbling in 19th. Bah! By this point I was down a shade over $600, and I stopped regging, vowing to play out the last few tables to the best of my ability and then call it a day.

I had eight games left, either just started or not in great shape, and I calculated that I needed to ship one and cash another to beat breakeven for the day. One by one the tables disappeared in a frustrating string of retarded bad beats, until I was left with just three. So I was like, it's OK, if I can fashion two 2nds, or a win and a cash, then I'm OK; but I didn't really believe it was gonna happen. And then, slowly but surely, I started to build stacks in two of them just before the blinds started to go up near the bubble, and suddenly I had stacks which I could use to bully and intimidate people. I lost the third game somewhere, but because I was so keen to focus on the two with stacks I didn't even notice it until some time after I must have bust. So I used my stack to bully my way to two FTs as decent chip leader in both. Suddenly, it was on. Suddenly I could still make a profit on the day. Although both FTs formed within a minute or two of each other, I pretty much steamrollered one of the FTs for the win there, although the last hand was a bit of a sweat, ATvJ9 aipf for about 90% of the chips and he flopped an open-ender. But thankfully blanks on turn and river and I was home and dry. And given I was already on the other FT, I had guaranteed profit for the day. Now to see how the other table went. Well, players suddenly dropped out quickly to others and I was now longer chip leader. Because of the other clashes I suddenly found myself 3/3 with about 10BB and then in a BvB spot we both had pairs but he had the bigger pair (55 vs JJ iirc) and it all went in pre and I didn't bink the set so I was out in 3rd for $235.

Magically, almost out of nowhere, I'd gone from what seemed like an almost certain huge losing day into a day where I actually made a decent $217 profit. All because I kept my focus right to the very end, kept making the plays which I know are profitable over the long term despite the recent bad beats, and it all paid off. Funny thing is, I'd only been chatting about this in our skype group a day or two before, the fact that, in MTTs, profit and loss for a session is decided not by how you start, but by how you finish. After hours of grinding, the last few games running will (hopefully) be the ones you are deep in, where all the money is, and that's when your concentration levels have to be at their peak; you can't allow fatigue to get in the way. So that's the moral of the story... Focus on the last game as if it was the first!

Sickest ever day at 180s

Gonna keep this short and sweet.

Friday evening was pretty decent cos I skipped on the poker entirely that day and went out for a meal after a last minute invite from a friend I hadn't seen in far too long, and I enjoyed a delicious duck curry in a Thai restaurant in Witham, followed by a couple of beers in a pub which was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night.

And then came Saturday........... far more epic than I could possibly have imagined, and obviously the result of good karma for restarting my blogging a couple of days before :-)

Basically I just couldn't miss. I played just 18 of the 12/180s on Stars, but I spent the whole day on an absolutely insane 830% ROI heater, profiting to the tune of 1,580 dollars plus change. In just four short hours I shipped one of them, and I also got two 2nds, a third and a 5th, along with two min-cashes. After reviewing the games I could even say I was disappointed with the way I played and lost one of the HU matches, which I should have won against a poor player, perhaps costing myself another 200 dollars, but perhaps that would be greedy. And I even ran decent in the 2s I was loading at the same time to fill spaces, also managing a 2nd there, although that was a more modest 30 dollar profit. But it all added up to a profit of over sixteen hundred dollars on the day. Just wow!!!

So, that meant a big leap in my OPR, which is now up to 99.61% and a ranking of 3,937. If I put in a big effort I'm not that far away from a 9* rating, and if I push hard for the rest of the month, perhaps with a bit of rungood in a couple of scheduled tourneys, I can make a real run at the TLB for October to try and get in the top 200 and win myself one of the monthly cash prizes. Even a top 1,000 finish gets me into the 20k freeroll they do, so I definitely will be looking to make that. Currently ranked 462, but still hardly played this month. Volume was down on Saturday mainly because I stopped regging so early after making all those FTs and wanting to focus on them, but frankly I'd rather bink the massive amounts of cash instead of grinding VPP.

If I can run half decent for the rest of this month to make up for the awful luck I had last month then this will easily end up as my biggest ever month. Gogogogo.

12/180s - dipping the toe in the realm of the pro

So, didn't blog again last month, or the month before either, but back at it now. So, what's been happening?

Well I didn't put in much effort at the tables in August. Soooooo fucking lazy. I know I was in Denmark at the start of the month, and at the cricket a lot in the second half of the month, but even so, in the second half of the month I managed a rather pathetic 227 games, and I ran pretty bad in them too, posting an overall loss, though the loss was less than $5. This basically means that the whole of the second half of August I didn't actually make any money at all. I just about clung on to Silver, and that was only salvaged because I finished up the month by playing 2.20 HUSNGs for some HU practice. They are pure torture. I played 73 of them, finishing with a 42-31 record, for an awesome profit of $7.40 (ROI ~5%). The standard of play was absolutely awful, including mine to be fair, but fortunately I was slightly less awful than the field. The 10% rake in them is sick. Also they're regular speed; Stars could really use some turbos in the nanostakes HUSNGs.

And then onto September. I started with all the usual good intentions – you know, good volume, discipline, and all that crap, but surprise, surprise I didn't put in the volume I intended. I did plan to play enough 2/180s to get to Gold by the end of the month, but although I got to Gold, I really did it by cheating a little.

On the 15th I decided that my 4,000 games sample was worthy of a move up to the 12s, but I wanted to insure myself a little against the massive variance that is continually being talked about in them, so I started a thread in the Marketplace where I offered to sell 50% of my action in the 12s (at no markup) selling and playing the tournaments in blocks of 100 games at a time. Although everyone was in the middle of WCOOP-fever in there, I was rather gratified that all the action was snapped up in 8 minutes flat, and I soon built up a lengthy list of standby backers too. Guess I undersold myself a little, but it was my first package, I didn't have a Marketplace reputation and I wanted to give myself the best chance of selling my action.

However, the games themselves went awfully. I genuinely believe that I have never run so bad in my entire poker career as I did for the 300 games I sold. KK was like my own private nemesis; the number of times I had that cracked was absurd, and usually deep in tournaments too, at times when there were large amounts of equity at stake in the pot. So, after 300 games I was down almost 75 BIs ($900), although I was "insured" for 50% of that by the action I sold. Grinding those games also helped me to clear the WCOOP reload bonus of $100, and I also collected about $30 worth of FPP so the whole ordeal only actually cost me around $320. The future benefit was that it also got me to Gold, and the FPP rate increase I got from that for October is now paying off as well. I expect to earn about an extra $50 in FPP in this month as a result of it. So anyway, I lost money in every single one of the three blocks I sold.

Thoroughly dejected and tearing my hair out in frustration at my epic runbad, I decided enough was enough, so I dropped back down to the 2s to grind out the remaining VPP I needed to make Gold while I considered my next move. The runbad continued to haunt me there though, and I dropped more money at a level I'd been crushing for three months.

I finally decided that despite my misfortune in the games, I am definitely +EV in 12/180s, and I have enough money offline that I can deposit if needed, so I'm going to go it alone in the 12s. If I'm profitable and can afford it why should I split my profits 50/50 with someone else, be it a single backer as part of a formal staking arrangement, or a group of players as part of a more ad hoc arrangement sellling shares in blocks of games. That's just wasting my own money and my own effort, letting others earn money off my sweat. I don't need to do that. So I've decided I'm going full time into the 12s on my own money, although for the time being I will continue to mix in 2s during quiet periods, simply for convenience to fill empty slots in the number of tables I play. I'll still earn money from them, and I'll still accrue VPP/FPP too. I can now afford to just dump them if a number of the 12s demand closer attention. But I'm looking to play more daylight friendly hours, like a normal person. So if I do that then at the start of my day at least the 12s will be loading very slowly indeed; adding a few 2s won't reduce my EV in the 12s by more than the money I'll earn from the 2s.

I've also decided to spend some time learning cash games to broaden my knowledge and experience. Obviously bankroll for this is a total non-issue, because in theory I have enough to play whatever level I want to start, but I'll start at the bottom and work my way up. This should help improve my deep stack play should I run deep in any of the scheduled tournaments I am going to be mixing in with my 180man grind. It will also be invaluable at some later point, when I (hopefully) move up the buyin levels again to play some of the daily, or even weekly, majors. Some of those play very deep and cash game skills will transfer nicely. I'm gonna start at 5NL or 10NL and work up from there, maybe with a bit of coaching.

So that's the plan. How's it going so far?

Well, it seems my decision to go it alone in the 12s has been generally rewarded by the RNG. In 162 games on my own coin I've shipped three, and FT'd plenty of others too, for a profit of around 1600 at an ROI of around 85%. Obviously this is a ludicrous swong in the other direction from the awful luck I endured through my first 300 games, and is probably about as unlikely to continue, but I'm happy to ride it while it lasts. It gives me a net OPR profit from 12s of $770, and an actual game profit (before rakeback) of around $1,200 because of the shares I sold. I'm currently sitting as a 99.3% player on OPR, ranked 6842 and still with my 8* rating.

So my goal for October is to play enough games for Platinum, which should give me an extra FPP boost for the rest of the year, and if I can do that and feel I can maintain that volume on a regular basis then I think that for a while I will finally be able to describe myself as a pro. I should be earning a decent amount and I will actually be playing full time. If it goes really well then I'll be able to make a solid push for Supernova next year just by playing 12/180s for less than 30hours per week plus whatever I decide to do with scheduled MTTs and cash games.

And away from the tables.....

I started my Danish classes three weeks ago, going OK so far. I think I'll be in the top half of the class and am looking forward to going to Denmark for a couple of days in early November for a bit of practice.

Also, bowling leagues have started again, and last Sunday at Tolworth I finished with a 278 game, my best game since my 299 about four years ago. So that was nice.

I'm feeling pretty buoyant right now, after a +700 day, but all in all I'd say things are looking up :-)

Wheeeeeeeeeee! 8 stars

Got that 8th star on the OPR rankings for the last 120 days. Up to 99.06% now.

Inside the top 10,000 too, currently 9,495th.

:-)

Overnight sweat.....

Just realised I'm 98.98% on OPR. That leaves me 0.02% away from 99%. Today's results were pretty good.

Will I wake up in the morning to find I've joined the 8 star club????

So exciting. Such drama. How will I sleep?????????????

:-)

Sunday rungood

Really been putting in good hours over the last few days, getting into the routine of playing every day at about the same time so I can get into the right mindset that this is now my job. I'm really starting to enjoy it, even though sometimes the endless coolers and bad beats are momentarily frustrating, and usually act as the precursor to loud profanity. I think it's much better to let it out than to bottle it up (another reason I'd probably suck at live donkaments).

Missing the first half of the month due to my trip to Italy was totally expected, but I was pretty lazy for a few days when I got back too, so I won't get in as many games as I intended to for July. It's taken me until today just to get in enough games to earn the VPPs I needed to keep Silver status, which is a pretty poor effort on my part. I lost Gold at the end of June because it's so much harder to earn in 2/180s than in DoNs at the lowest buyin level. These can't be so easily multitabled and also the 40c rake on the $10 DoNs attracted twice the VPP of the 20c rake on these, so getting Gold is basically a 40hr/week effort throughout the month in these. I'm not going to be able to get there this month, but I definitely want to do it in August. The extra FPP from the better multiplier on Gold from September onwards will add up to a fair bit of value come the end of the year.

I currently have just under 13k FPP, but I havent yet decided how I'm going to convert them. I'll either grind the 280FPP hypers or just save them up and buy bonuses at the end of the year (by which time I'll hopefully be up at the 12/180s and getting Platinum every month, so I'd be getting a better exchange rate). I'll have to work out whether the extra I'd get by grinding the 280FPP satellites will be worth not spending that time playing MTTs.

Had some some pretty miserable runbad in my three sessions which preceded this weekend. It seemed like every time I had QQ or KK against Ax the villain would either luckbox the ace, or some ridiculous straight or flush, so over those three days I only had about $52 profit in about 22 hours. Sick hourly!

But happily today and yesterday saw an upswing in my fortunes and I had +$180 and +$155 days, which made me much happier. As far as I can remember, today was my first profitable Sunday, which is quite pathetic considering it's the day all the donks come out to play. And I still managed to blank all of my last 20 or so tournaments today, so I could have finished an hour earlier with more profit. LOL.

Anyway, two 1sts and a 2nd on each day was a pretty decent return, and marked a return to my early form of either making deep runs at final tables or not going anywhere. Let's hope I can keep that going next week, because it sure is a pleasant diversion from the preceding three sessions, where I had an endless string of mincashes supplemented by a whole bunch of 4th-9ths, a profile of results only good enough to breakeven on the session. It seemed then that every promising tournament would be brutally truncated by a sick cooler or a massive bad beat just as the big money was coming round. The really weird thing is that throughout that breakeven stretch of about 300 games I actually managed to increase my ITM by nearly 0.5%, which means heaps of virtually useless mincashes. Maybe around the bubble I was subconsciously trying to limp into the cash a bit too much instead of just going for it. Who knows?

It's about time I put up my numbers again, and this is what they look like at the moment.

Played---------2493
ITM-------------378
FTs---------------170
Wins-------------23
Profit---- $1,874.52
ROI-------------34%
ITM----------15.2%

So, just coming up on 2500 games, which is a decent sample size, and closing in on $2k profit overall in these. I guess I'm starting to get a vague idea of my expectation in the game, and the good news is it appears I'm +EV in the game :-)

Hopefully this means I can start taking a decent regular income from them. My own laziness will curtail my potential earnings for this month; I wanted to get in 1500 games but I'll be lucky to get to about 1200 now with the time I wasted around the middle of the month. I guess I still have to learn to ration my time better, and discipline myself better, but hey, it's all part of the learning curve. Next goal is to get up on the Sharkscope leaderboard for these. 20th spot at the moment is former DoN reg Dino4312396, who is now grinding SNG MTTs at an even more sick rate than me, 50-tabling and mixing in the 45mans. His marker for 20th spot currently sits at $3,753 profit. By the time I get there that mark will have moved up, so I guess that even if I can put in 3000 games in next month I won't get there by the end of August unlesss I either run hot, or make a great leap of understanding which boosts my ROI. But goals are important.

But enough about me. Just like the news, I'm going to finish on an "And finally"; this one's about someone else's pokering.

At least I didn't run as bad, or as tilted, as some guy on one of the $100/$200 Daniel's Room tables I was watching after I finished playing yesterday. He donked off over $100k in about an hour, most of it to Negreanu himself, and included this bizarre hand. Negreanu had his stars on show, and is only Silver on the VIP scheme, so there can't be much history between them, which makes spunking off over $50k in one hand when 250BB deep and out of position with just 4th pair totally unreal, as there was no way it can have been a read-based play......

PokerStars Game #47226064625: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200 USD) - 2010/07/25 2:39:42 WET [2010/07/24 21:39:42 ET]
Table 'Daniel's Rm 200 IV' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: Odonkor1 ($51348 in chips)
Seat 2: kingsofcards ($48250 in chips)
Seat 3: molswi47 ($55294 in chips)
Seat 4: KidPoker ($127192 in chips)
Seat 5: Sussie Smith ($49498 in chips)
Seat 6: Mr Zahmat ($26095 in chips)
Mr Zahmat: posts small blind $100
Odonkor1: posts big blind $200
Odonkor1: posts the ante $50
kingsofcards: posts the ante $50
molswi47: posts the ante $50
KidPoker: posts the ante $50
Sussie Smith: posts the ante $50
Mr Zahmat: posts the ante $50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
kingsofcards: raises $400 to $600
molswi47: calls $600
KidPoker: calls $600
Sussie Smith: folds
Mr Zahmat: calls $500
Odonkor1: calls $400
*** FLOP *** [6c 4d As]
Mr Zahmat: checks
Odonkor1: checks
kingsofcards: bets $1800
molswi47: calls $1800
KidPoker: calls $1800
Mr Zahmat: folds
Odonkor1: raises $5600 to $7400
kingsofcards: folds
molswi47: folds
KidPoker: calls $5600
*** TURN *** [6c 4d As] [5d]
Odonkor1: bets $13200
KidPoker: calls $13200
*** RIVER *** [6c 4d As 5d] [Ts]
Odonkor1: bets $30098 and is all-in
KidPoker: calls $30098
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Odonkor1: shows [5h 3s] (a pair of Fives)
KidPoker: shows [4s 4c] (three of a kind, Fours)
KidPoker collected $108293 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $108296 | Rake $3
Board [6c 4d As 5d Ts]

LOL

First day back at work...

Well, in terms of results it went pretty well; one win, two 2nds, a few more FTs, plus a bunch of min cashes. In total I played only 94 games, and managed to cash 20 of them, which is a pretty decent clip. Only took about 5½ hours, but it felt like more. 15 days since I last played has really taken the edge off my stamina, so I'll have to work on getting that back again if I'm gonna hit even the reduced goals for the month.

But hey, $182 profit isn't too bad for first day back. At least it means my basic ability wasn't contaminated by spending so much time in the company of French and Italians while on holiday :)

June results - July holidays

So, June is now gone, and after all this time I think I can finally lay claim to a set of monthly results which approach a certain level of professionalism. I disciplined myself enough, and managed my time well enough, that I played for just over 120 hours in the month. I stuck to just one game all month, the 2/180s, rather than making capricious changes of format after small downswings like I have done in the past, and I hope this is testament to my new dedication to doing this properly, testament to my growing understanding of the long term and the nature of variance in poker, and testament to my growing ability to be objective about how my game is going, without getting too high on a day where I run good or too low on a day where I run bad.

I made just over $1,200 profit from the games, with about $65 worth of FPP value and I also cleared another $50 Stellar, for a total profit of about $1,340 on the month. However, I didn't manage to maintain my Gold status, although I did expect that, so my FPP earnings will take a small hit this month as I drop down to Silver, but it's not that big a deal really. I won't make Gold this month either, so that will have to be a goal for August.

So, the reason it's taken a while to post up for last month's results is because I have been sitting on a beach in Italy. It was a pretty good holiday, the only minor complaint being a total absence of fresh fruit juice. Now it's back to reality, and on with the business of grinding for this month.

Given the time which has already passed, and other plans for the month, I'm probably only going to have about 12 days play this month, so if I can average just over 120 games per day of play that should be around 1,500 tournaments, and should give me another $1,100 or so profit if I can maintain my current ROI.

Here's how it all looks so far for 2/180s

Played--------1804
ITM-------------257
FTs----------------122
Wins--------------16
Profit---- $1,305.56
ROI-------------33%

Target for July

1) 1,500 games
2) ? profit
3) Maybe mix in some scheduled MTTs if they start near the beginning of my sessions.

Why did I waste all that time in DoNs?

Now I've found these 180 mans I can't believe I wasted all that time with actually playing those cursed DoNs. I still think they're fascinating to think about strategically, probably because I can get absolutely obsessed with detail and accuracy, and of course in DoNs there is usually a play which is demonstrably mathematically "correct", whereas in most other formats there are usually a number of different lines which could all be correct. That's a facet of deeper stacked poker which makes it simultaneously as interesting as DoNs, and yet less beautiful, less perfect: it can't actually be solved, only interpreted.

Anyway, I did play the DoNs, and I can't change the past, so there's no point regretting it. All I can do is to look forward and apply myself to this new challenge I've found in the 180 mans.

So, another day done, and starting to get the rewards. Made it through the $1k profit barrier in these today with my last game to finish; it was a 2nd worth $72, which took me to a cumulative profit of $1,020, not including FPP value. It only works out to a less than stellar $12.25 per hour at the moment. But I think that after nearly 1,200 games this month I'm starting to get the hang of these, starting to push better in the late mid-game and through the second last table to accumulate chips, and hopefully that will start to translate into making deep runs at FTs more often. I shipped another two today, with 2 more 2nds, and a 3rd, comprising a pretty good return for 119 games. Today's total profit came to about $240, which leaves me looking like this...

Played---------1194
ITM--------------168
FTs----------------82
Wins--------------13
Profit---- $1,020.36
ROI-------------38%

I also need to set myself some new challenges, so here goes.

1) Probably going to be harder than I thought a couple of weeks back, but retaining Gold this month would be nice. But it will be a hard slog to do this; it's about 150 games per day for the rest of the month, which is about 9 hours every day. If I miss out then so be it, I won't beat myself up about it.

2) Get on the 2/180 leaderboard. After just 3 weeks I already have about 1/3 of the total profit for 2010 of the player in 20th spot. Given that I'll miss about 12 days for my holiday to Italy, plus about another 12 days going all the cricket this summer, a few days in Denmark, plus the fact that they should probably win more money too, maybe I'll aim to overhaul them by end of August. I may review this goal by the end of the month.

3) Start cashing out money on a regular basis.

4) Get a big enough sample size of 2/180s to consider getting staked for the 12/180s. It's a real shame that the 7.70/180s hardly ever go off, they would have been a great stepping stone.

The shipping forecast is good!

Just a quick brag post about today's effort. Played 58 games in 4 hours, shipped two, and also a 2nd and a 3rd amongst my other cashes, overall profit for the day about $242. Decided to quit on what for me is a huge winning day.

Played--------1075
ITM-------------151
FTs---------------73
Wins--------------11
Profit------ $781.40
ROI-------------33%

Putting in the hours

So, after Tuesday's effort I've really started to put in some decent grinding sessions, 6 hours Thursday, 9¾ hours Friday and a monster 12 hours today, with mixed results.

Thursday was really a bit of a downer, I just couldn't seem to get anything going at all. In 93 tourneys I only managed 8 cashes, and my best result was nothing better than a single, solitary 3rd. I think it was starting to affect my play a little, so that's why I just cut the session short and gave up on the day, finishing the day quite a bit down, with a loss of a little over $86.

Friday was marginally better for results, but far too many of my FTs I couldn't get anything going, and the day ended up being at least as frustrating as Thursday. I only got up a decent run at one of the final tables, and I pretty much steam-rollered everyone to ship it, but other than that, I only managed to ladder my way up to a 3rd in one other tourney as the monster chip leader took on and eliminated all comers. Pretty much all the rest were me getting through to the last 9 with basically no stack and never once finding a decent hand, nor getting a bit of luck with a showdown, so I had 11 mincashes and another 10 finishes from 4th to 9th. So, a grand total of 23 cashes in 151 games, and I scraped a profit of about $23 for the day.

Saturday was our first World Cup match, against the Yanks, and we made a complete pig's ear of that, playing abysmal football in a 1-1 draw. Thankfully the USA were even more mediocre than we were, otherwise we'd have lost. Still, went to Tim and Tina's and had a great BBQ and watched the game, so that was good fun.

And then today's session. Started around 2.45pm and finished around 2.45 am, I managed to get in 206 games, with 34 cashes.But hugely disappointing again, this time a massive 21 of those 34 were mincashes. But of the 13 where I made the final table, I went on to 5th or better in 11 of them, so that was nice, but I really wish I'd made a few more FTs today, it could have been a big score. So, one win, two 2nds, two 3rds, two 4ths and four 5ths was where most of today's prize money came from, though I was totally robbed in both the games where I finished runner-up, continually outplaying both opponents only for them to hit the most improbable cards to survive, before finally losing one too many in each game. But if I can do whatever I need to make sure I get this deep more often then I'm sure the results will take another leap forward and I'll get my fair share of wins. I'm sure there must be some huge basic error I'm making which is stopping me from going deeper more often. Overall profit for the day was $138.

Story so far...


Played---------1017
ITM--------------141
FTs---------------67
Wins---------------9
Profit------ $538.92
ROI-------------24%


I need about another 1900 VPP this month to maintain Gold, which is around another 1700 games, and I have about 17 days to do it, minus the days where I have other plans. Should be manageable.

A proper day's work

Today, for the first time, I finally sat down and put in a full block of 8 hours of play. I've alluded to it before often enough, but particularly when I was playing DoNs I'd never really actually done it, or truly wanted to. But here in MTTs there is no game selection to worry about, I just load up and play what's in front of me. I realise now how much stress and added difficulty there was in DoNs, simply in trying to avoid the block registrations of other good players when half a dozen of them would all end up in the same game. It was stress that I didn't really need.

I nearly got to my "whole day" goal a couple of times in the last week, with a combined total of 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, but otherwise the only times I had put in big hours on a single day was when I was at the deadline of a deposit bonus and trying to clear it before it expired. I now want to start doing this on a daily basis, as if it were any other normal job.

Today I played in 131 games, managing 17 cashes, 10 of which were FTs, one of which I converted into a win, and another I finished 2nd when my AA were cracked after getting it in all in preflop. But over all I finished the day up $113, saved by the last two games to finish, which were a 3rd and a 4th.

Which means that the story so far is as follows...

Played----------567
ITM---------------76
FTs---------------38
Wins---------------7
Profit------ $462.96
ROI-------------37%


So far this month I have 613 VPP, meaning I basically need to average 100 games per day between now and the end of the month to maintain my Gold status. That's going to be a tough challenge, but I'm going to try and do it. I also only need another 1100 VPP for my next $50 of Stellar reward.

Rungood Sunday

Just gonna be a quick brag about running half decent today, 77 games for $148 profit, and a daily ROI of 87%, bringing up my overall ROI to 36%. Nice spread of results, with a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 9 mincashes. Again a little disappointed that I couldn't make a few deeper runs though, something I have to work on. Could quite happily play these for 8 hours per day; there's a lot less stress points in them because the money comes in bigger chunks but less often than when grinding DoNs, where every table is a sweat. A lot of MTTs you lose the stack early or through the mid game, and it's no big deal because you expect to bust out a load of them long before the bubble.

Once again though, I failed to come back for a second set... Either don't stop, or get back on the tables after a food break

Played----------436
ITM---------------59
FTs---------------28
Wins---------------6
Profit------ $349.40
ROI-------------36%

Variance, MTT style

Well, I'm over 300 games into my 2/180 experiment, and early indications are a little inconclusive. I have a whole bunch of second last table finishes, but they don't even win double the buy-in. I've got 5 wins under my belt, but otherwise I'm not getting really deep into FTs often enough at the moment, only a couple of 3rds and three 4ths, and a whole bunch of 5th thru 9th. My ROI is only a rather disappointing 25%. I'm still feeling positive though, because I seem to remember that a fair number of those early departures were due to horrible suckouts when I had a big chip lead.

I take it as an encouraging sign that I'm getting lots of chips on a regular basis and hope that in the long term it will start to pay off — none of my wins have been sneaking up from behind, in all five cases I've been a big stack from a long way out. I hope that this will balance out as my sample size increases, and I can start to score a few more in the top four positions, but if I continue to fail to make deep runs in FTs then my ROI will struggle to improve and I'll need to do some serious leakbusting earlier than I expected. I don't know whether I'm being too aggro in pursuit of 1st, and maybe should blend in a hint of "laddering". Right now I'm just trying to get a big enough sample to be worth looking at, though obviously I'm trying to win money while I do that.

Today was pretty decent for results, but a little lighter on volume than I intended, two sessions totalling less than 7 hours. I did manage a 1st in each block, and a total profit for the day of just under $150, hauling back the losses of yesterday and the day before, both of them days where I failed to register a win.

I think I'm only just starting to get a feel for just how swongy MTTs are gonna be, and also get an understanding of how just a half dozen coinflips going the other way would make a huge difference to my results so far. And as I try this new format I am re-discovering exactly what is meant by meaningful sample size. I realise I'd forgotten a few weeks ago, before I even started the $10 DoNs and I had become fixated on results over tiny samples. Sometimes I find myself a little on edge when three or four tournaments which are starting to look promising all go up in flames in quick succession, and I'm really starting to appreciate the synch breaks at xx:55 to take a minute or two for some fresh air to calm down and breathe. Fortunately there's always another one going off in a few minutes, so I can quickly replace those I bust, and I have to remember this fact at all time. If I played live I would probably have the worst poker face ever, because live MTTs aren't so easily reloaded!

I think I have to start thinking a level lower in some spots against the donks you come across in these, like raising over tiny donk-bets when I whiff the flop. Far too often villain has top pair, and isn't laying it down; it's caused me grief on a few occasions now. Obvious flushes is another one. So often when they bet they have it and I'm paying off far too regularly, so that's another bad habit to try and drop.

Anyway, looking forward to another fun Sunday on the grind tomorrow, hopefully profits will skyrocket! Aiming for 120 tournaments, or alternatively, to run deep and cash high in so many that I only play a few. Let's see what tomorrow's update brings..........

180 mans FTW!

So, I think I've decided on playing some MTTs this month. Played a couple more blocks of the 2/180s yesterday, and another block today. Shipped another couple of them, to add to Monday night's success, and FT'd another 9. Making money was nice, but more important was having fun while doing so. Another appealing thing is the synchronised breaks, five minutes to stretch legs or whatever as play is suspended on all tables.

As I don't yet have any kind of meaningful sample size, it would be totally random for me to guess at a realistic ROI; at the moment I'm running around 53%, but hopefully that will go up. The best players in these are allegedly around 100%, so that's something to aim for. I will just try to grind out games in blocks of about 30 or 40 , with each block taking around 2-3 hours to complete. Playing 2-3 blocks per day would give me nearing 1k games in less than a couple of weeks time, and from then I can start to draw some semi-reasonable conclusions about my EV in the game. I'll start off loading 15 games at a time, and as I get more comfortable, and more familiar with the structure, I might start to bump it up a little, but cut back on regging for new ones as I bust out if a couple of tourneys start to show promise and I need to focus on them a little more.

Obviously the plan would be to migrate up to the 12/180s later, because the 7.70s hardly ever run, whch is a shame. But that would still be quite a way into the future right now. I have no desire to play the 4/180 non-turbos either, so it would be a big jump up. I hated the slow DoNs, so I don't suppose the slow 180s will be any more appealing, I'd probably just blind away or wind up shoving into AA. Plus, FT-ing a couple of slow ones might mean at least a 5 hour session instead of just 3 hours, and the VPP/hour would be awful as well. I'd probably struggle to even make Gold playing them because they take so much longer to load as well as to play.

Anyway, I now have a vague plan for June, which is better than I had 48 hours ago.

2/180 summary

Played-----------145
ITM--------------14
FTs---------------12
Wins--------------3
Profit------ $169.40
ROI-------------53%

Nice that I have more wins than min-cashes right now :-)


The other good news is that I finally got my Xbox controller for Windows and I set it up tooday with Xpadder to use it through TableNinja to play the games. It's a lot more comfortable to be able to lean back in a comfortable chair for long periods of time while playing, so this should be good for the future and make it easier to grind. I set up a layout which is nice and simple, and hopefully fairly intuitive. It has all the buttons I need to multitable, so now all I have to do is just have to get used to knowing instinctively which button is where so I can increase my speed with it. At the moment I still have to consciously think which button does what, which is taking away from the actual poker decisions, but all I need is practice. Only had one misclick that I remember.

June looks like being much more fun.

Should I stay in DoNs?

The biggest news in the DoN world is the collusion scandals which have rocked PokerStars in the last few days. A few days ago on 2+2 a new account posted about being banned by Stars' security, and it exploded into a huge exposé on a ring of over 40 accounts from China, connected with the OP in that thread, who were all banned a couple of months ago. They were shifting equity about on the bubble, working as a team to keep their team-mates in the game, and thus bust a non-colluding player. Most of the collusion was at the highest stakes Stars offers for these, the $52 and $104 turbo games, and estimates of how much they manage to cheat regs out of total over half a million dollars directly from the games, plus the rakeback they accrued while doing so. And that's not including incidental losses of the cheated players, such as moving down to recover bankroll, attempts to make SNE being aborted etc.

A number of other threads about other collusion teams, apparently unconnected to the big Chinese ring, have also sprung up in the last few days. Stars have been silent on the matter and there is a lot of concern about the integrity of DoNs as a whole, and about Stars' competency to police the games they are spreading. There is a suspicion that the cheats may have simply opened new acounts and carried on cheating as before.

I'm left wondering if it's pretty much screwed me over the last few days. I'm on an 18BI downswing over just 102 games, so I've decided to call it a day for May. I don't know if it's just ridiculous variance over a tiny sample, if I'm being cheated, or if I'm simply spending far too much time being concerned who's in my games and not enough time concentrating on hands and situations. But I do know that I'd have been over $180 better off if I hadn't bothered with the last two days, and given that the middle two weeks of the month were basically breakeven, I'd probably have been better off quitting after about the 11th and doing something useful.

Last night I was running so bad I found myself taking a somewhat reckless shot at the 20s to chase losses: I lost about $70 in the first block, but didn't learn from that experience, so regged for another dozen games up there. Fortunately I recovered with a profit of about $110 in the second block. Considering I'm hopelessly under-rolled for them, and was on a bit of a tilt at the time, I should probably think myself lucky that it didn't end up costing me money. I need to remember that episode the next time the tilt-monster invades my thoughts.

After everything that has occurred, I'm considering trying a different format altogether right now, either cash or MTTs. Don't think I'm going to go into regular STTs though.

Here's how May panned out

25 games at 20s - $40 profit
1,315 games at 10s - $304 profit
385 games at 5s - $188 profit
SCOOPs - $42 loss
Gold VIP freeroll - cashed for $27
Collusion credit - $5.20
Session of MTTs - $81.60 profit
FPP earned - $86.50
Reload bonus cleared - $222.50
Stellar reward cleared - $50

Total profit $962.80


So if I hadn't played the last 102 games I would have comfortably cleared $1k for the month. But hey, overall happy with it, and although I gave up on Platinum after running bad around mid-month and being sensibly advised by Alex to drop tables, I did make Gold quite comfortably and am reaping the small reward of accumulating FPP at a much better rate now.


But the question I now have to ask myself is do I want to continue playing DoNs in the current climate? First is the collusion problem — am I being cheated? Second is the issue of whether DoNs survive this scandal — will PokerStars concede defeat to the cheats and discontinue the format as one of their offerings?

I don't know the answer to either of these questions, but having given up on DoNs for the month earlier today I decided to have a bit of fun and register for a block of a dozen SNG MTTs, the turbo 2/180s. The play in them was absolutely terrible, and although I didn't cash in 11 of them, I did ship the other one, a score of $108. Weeeeeeeee, my first MTT win, not including satties and 45mans. I certainly felt a lot more comfortable than at any time in DoNs over the last couple of days, and it was a hell of a lot more fun too.

Maybe I'll give them a go instead, the other alternative being switching to cash and becoming competent at that. As it is the deepest stacked I expect it to be the most complex, therefore where a good player can have the best edge. Also I expect it to be the one version which will survive the longest without either serious scandal or becoming "solved".

I haven't yet decided what to do, and will think about it in the next couple of days.

Remember, it's always a good time to re-evaluate

I'm faced with the possibility that my first foray into the 10s began with a huge heater, and that I won't be beating them for as much as I hoped (or even at all). Shortly after I cashed out a chunk of money a few days ago I hit the biggest downswing I've had since I started taking poker semi-seriously; over my last 160 games at 10s I've dropped > $150, which is about 15 BIs. I know, it's not exactly a mega sample, nor my biggest swing in terms of BIs (I had a -19BI swing at 5s, and an amazing -37BI at 1s when I was 32 tabling them) but it is easily the biggest swing in $$$, and right on the back of a cashout it has left my bankroll in a precarious state. Having cashed out down to 60 BIs, I'm now down around 45 BIs for the 10s.

Rather irrationally, I decided that the solution lay in a pointless moan in the skype chat, but fortunately for me, Alex (redwiredaces) was about in there too. He very quickly, and very sensibly, gave me a metaphorical slap round the face with a wet fish and told me to drop some tables, back as far as 14. I discussed the idea of this with him a few days ago after he did a DoN video screen share with me a few days back, but I think I'd got so blinkered by accumulating VPPs and hitting Platinum this month that I was playing too many tables and consequently I was probably making too many bad decisions, causing me to end up losing money at the game at a rate which was orders of magnitude faster than could possibly be offset by any FPP advantage.

Even though it just felt like I was playing good and running bad, and that I was just getting sucked out on, and even if that was true, it still dents confidence to be losing money. So, on the back of his excellent advice, I've done the sensible thing and cut back tables. This means I have to give up on reaching Platinum this month, as it will now be impossible to reach while playing fewer tables. I've also taken the decision to drop back down to the 5s for a few days, for two reasons – 1) to get a bit of confidence back, and 2) to rebuild the roll back up to a safe level for the 10s, which should allow me to continue to play with confidence. I'm currently >100 BIs deep for the 5s, but instead of moving back up to 10s when I hit ~$620, I think I might grind up past $700 at the 5s for the added security when I move back up. A drop down to a game I can beat easier for a while is probably a good thing too.

I'm now 16 tabling the 5s (not 14, guess I'm still a little stubborn) and making money again, and hopefully I can be back grinding where I want to be in a few days. I still want Platinum next month though. My remaining target for May is to grind out enough VPP to clear the SCOOP reload bonus while only 16-tabling, and to not lose money doing so. That needs to be done by close of business on May 30, and I only need another 1151 VPP to do that, which is easily doable in ten days, and I should be able to kill the fish who donk around the 5s over this weekend.

So, thanks must go to Alex. That five minutes may not have been significant to you, but it could be crucial to me, and I wish him all the best in his attempt at the 52s.

Upping my game in May

And so onto the month of May, and my move up to the 10s. First of all, my aim for this month is to play enough to make Platinum on the 'Stars VIP system.

So, May started with the realisation that I had two chunks of my WCOOP reload bonus left to clear. I deposited the 2nd and 3rd chunks way back in November last year, with 180 days to clear them; I also did the New Year reload bonus, but that cleared first because it only had 90 days to clear. So, that was $150 of money back that I had to earn this month. But I still needed over 2,000 VPP to get there, and yet, over the course of four months so far this year I'd only made a little over twice that in total! This was going to require an effort!

But it would also properly spur me on to make some money from the games, as well as get some volume in to clear the bonus. The first chunk of $94 was due by the end of the May 3, and the second chunk of $56 by the early hours of today. In typical "Dave" style, I cut both deadlines super-fine, completing both of them with less than 45 minutes to spare, after marathon charges.

The good news is that it was definitely worth it. In addition to the $150 of reload bonus, I have cleared the first of the $50 levels in the Stellar rewards, and am a good way towards the next one, which I hope to clear this month too. I also accumulated over 3,200 FPP, worth about another $50, and then on top of that I have the actual profit from the games, which came to $420.

So that's ~$670 better off already this month, and I hope to make a bit more over the rest of May. Getting up the VIP levels will obviously mean more FPP because of the better multipliers, and I have now churned through over 1300 DoNs at 10s, which is hopefully a big enough sample to confirm that I am at least still +EV at this level.

So far I have accumulated 2,160 VPP in May, leaving another 5,340 to reach Platinum. That's 2,428 games in about 19 days. With the multipliers should mean another $165 worth of FPP, plus another $50 of Stellar. I have also done the SCOOP reload bonus, which will be worth another $100. Plus my profit from the games, of course. If I can maintain my current ROI for the rest of the month then that should add an estimated $900 profit from the actual play, hopefully giving me a total profit for the month of around $1900. Which would be a pretty decent result.

So that's the plan, let's see how it works out.

[ ] Hitting targets and blogging

So anyway, I'm sure I said something a while back about setting some targets; alongside volume and profit goals, one of these was regular updates to the blog, and it's been about 6 weeks since I so much as logged in here. Well, this is what has happened since then.


March turned out to be a big bucket of fail. The aim was 1600ish games for 3500VPP, but I acually only managed one third of that, 531 games for 1168 VPP. ITM for the month was 5.6% for a game profit of $192, but I also cleared $100 of bonus and earned around $25 worth of FPPs.

Pretty sure I didn't even post in the April Goals thread, but anyway, April results were decidedly unimpressive too, despite not actually declaring any golas. I played 289 more of the 5.40 non-turbos for a pathetic $9 profit (i.e. 1 win the correct side of BE, lol). So I decided to quit those and go back to turbos, but only after tilting off $52 in the 3.25/45mans, though I was a bit unlucky in a couple of them, getting AA cracked aipf in two of them near the bubble for pots worth >1/4 of the chips in play.

Anyway, back to the turbo 5s for a bit in mid-April, where 150-odd games yielded only about $33.

After such dubious successes, it was at this point that I decided to bite the bullet and move up to the 10s, playing my first games on April 24. Up to the end of April I played 338 of them for a profit of about $65.

So over a range of games I finished with an April DoN profit of around $107 + around 2300 FPP, worth somewhere around $30. There was also the April Fools instant cash credits purchased on the 1st day of the month, which was 3 x $15 for 1000 FPP each, adding another $45. Finally, I cleared the last of the $10 chunks on the Stellar rewards scheme. That makes a grand (or rather, not so grand) total of around $190 profit for April.

Roll on May.......

WTF happened to March?

Already another month has pretty much gone by and I didn't even realise. So much for my goals, I probably will never crack this volume thing and I wonder if I should not bother, just do this as a hobby instead, and get a proper job. That would suck.

So far this month I'm a shade under 500 games at the nonturbos, which is still enough to retain my Silver Star status but not a lot more. A long way of Gold that's for certain. I cleared a few dollars bonus, and am in profit for the games, but nowhere near as much as would have been ideal. Total profit including "rakeback" is only around $300. Still staying about the same distance behind the 20th spot on the SS leaderboard for $5 DoNs, which is frustrating because it means only volume is stopping me from being up near the top of it.

Gonna grind this evening and see where I end up.

The missing blog entries?

So, it's nearly two weeks since I added anything to this; how have things been going?

Well, my only poker goal for the month was a volume goal of games for the month. I started a bit slowly, Monday 1st was another visit to Liz and baby Joshua, followed by a spot of bowling, managed my best set of the year, a rather respectable 575(ish). Didn't play on Tuesday 2nd either, managed a smattering of games on 3rd and 4th for a few dollars profit, before deciding to get my grinding hat on for Friday, which went a bit pear shaped. I ground my way through 62 games for what I intended to be my just the first of two sessions, but when I checked my balance as that session came to a close for a break and some food, I had somehow managed to drop $45. This was despite thinking I'd played pretty decent and expecting to actually be up by around the same amount. Somewhere along the line I was $90 shy of where I felt I ought to be; after reviewing some of the games I decided to not bother with a second session that day.

This was before any of the events of the weekend was actually planned, which was all done a bit last minute.

So, I've had a better time generally over the beginning of March when away from the virtual felt, enjoying myself a bit more than last month. The weekend started with a great Saturday afternoon out at the Tower of London with Christina, where we did a tour with a Yeoman Warder, saw the Crown Jewels, and visited the Regimental Museum of the Fusiliers, particularly marvelling at the dozen VCs on display there; that was followed by a drink at the Dickens Inn and a fantastic curry in St Katherine Docks and then a few more drinks in the Coal Hole on the Strand, where we were joined by Helen T and other friends; that was Saturday night, and we finished it sharing takeaway chicken at Helen's flat at about 4am, where we talked about all sorts of things from bowling to troublesome colleagues to errant partners. Somehow she then got up in the morning and bowled another 299..... I hate her for being able to do that. But not really!

That was followed up by a rather tired and early start for me on Sunday and a visit to my sister's new base, near which we had a drink in a 900 year old pub, and had a great meal in another pub (pork and apple stew with a lovely mash, mmmmmmmm). Then on Monday I took Tina for a birthday lunch, up at the Daylight, then in the evening Mum arrived back over here from Denmark for a fortnight, the first time I'd seen here in about two and a half months. So that was a pretty good three days.

And then yesterday and today I finally managed to fit in a bit more poker. Both were short but productive sessions, yielding a combined profit of $77. This gets me back in profit for the month so far, at +$67 for the games.

Year to date for non-turbos only


Games 375
Wins 200
ITM 58.7%
Profit $175
ROI 8.6%


Once again I'm behind schedule on my volume goal for the month though. I've only played 158 of my target of 1,600 games; that's 1/10 of the target in 1/3 of the available time. That 1,600 gets me past the Gold Star requirement and up to 3,500VPP for the month, which will clear a fair amount of reload bonus, plus Stellar rewards and a decent value of FPP. I really, REALLY have to start doing this properly now.

New month, new discipline

Well, having failed rather badly on my goals for the month, I decided to ease myself through the end of February with a bit of fun poker rather than grinding DoNs, so I had a play with a few microstakes MTTs; some scheduled, some SNG. The scheduled ones were a bit more of a grind, but I managed a couple of cashes. The sheer hard work of surviving the huge field made it a bit less enjoyable. But I had really forgotten how much fun the turbo 180mans are on Stars, and I managed to FT a $2 one of those, which was quite satisfying considering it was only a tiny sample. I'll keep those in mind whenever I need a change of scenery. Other than that I didn't really play much poker for the last few days; I requested a self ban from the 2+2 forums until 1st March to stop myself trolling crap threads, and basically got my diet and sleeping habits back in order.

So, my result for February was as follows

$175 profit from playing
$100 from bonuses earned
$ 25 worth of FPP earned

Total $300 profit

Next month I'm going to be a bit more realistic about goals, so here they are.........

1) Play enough to make 3500 VPP. In non-turbo DoNs that's basically around 50/day, or about 2½ hours work. Basically should be easy to make this if I apply myself. That would get me comfortably past enough VPP to make Gold Star.

That's really about it, my only goal, other than not becoming a spewy tilt-monkey. I think I finally figured it out: if I put in the volume then the money will look after itself. Make the goal something which I can control absolutely: that's volume, it's not profit. Previously I tried to tie goals too much into the financial results, and then got disheartened when they didn't pay off. Now I just want to put in volume at a game I know I'm beating. That volume on its own would release nearly $200 of reload bonuses, and also earn $80 worth of Stellar rewards plus around $75 worth of FPP, so that's $350+ right there. Then on top of that I'm looking for profit from the games I play, maybe including a lucky break in one of the VIP tourneys they run on Saturdays.

Bring on March!

[ ] Sustainable

So, another couple of sessions of these slow go DoNs, 19 games late on yesterday before I stopped regging as the games totally dried up, and then another 27 in my first session today, for +$37 and +$14 respectively and a total of +$51 profit. Over a ridiculously small sample of 113 games I am ITM >65% and my ROI is at 21.3%, which seems like a massive heater to me. The VPPs are gonna accumulate pretty swiftly if I can get some solid volumes in. Can't wait to see where this takes me after a thousand games or so, when I'll have a decent sample size. Profit for the year from games only, has now crept over $500 from games, so this is not including bonuses etc.

I've got a sportsman's bet on with Chris from the DoN discussion group about racing to see who can be first to get on the the SS leaderboard, but I have a massive lead and should be able to do it easy. 20th spot is now at $698, so I'm back to within $200 and putting some effort in should get me there within not much time.

Turbos

Games 1387
Wins 759
ITM 54.7 %
Profit $377.60
ROI 5.23 %

Non turbos

Games 113
Wins 74
ITM 65.5%
Profit $ 129.80
ROI 21.27%

Combined

Profit $507.40
ROI 6.48%

Considering whether to make a change

So I played another couple of sets of the $5.40 non-turbo DoNs and, apart from turning a profit, which makes you feel good anyway, I also find them more playable at the moment. There's less of a rush, because there's more time allowed per action, and less pressure from the increasing blinds. Even when they get to the later stages of the game there's still enough time to make a considered decision on whether to push or fold, even if there are 25 tables open. Only time will tell if his is merely because they're a bit new or whether I genuinely feel this way, but I'm enjoying the format much more than the turbos.

Today so far – 47 games, 31 cashes, $56 profit. Along with the $39 from yesterday it pretty much wipes out the deficit from that horrible three hours on Friday night. Profit for the year is back up to $456 and yet again I'm on the tail of a Sharkscope leaderboard spot.

Changing games

Well after yesterday's spewathon I was a little more cautious today, for less than obvious reasons. If I think I'm +EV in the game then I should be going for it irrespective of short term results. But anyway, I was cautious, and after working up about $16 profit in a set of turbos I spontaneously decided to reg to a set of non turbos, figuring that 20 of them would earn me exactly enough VPP to maintain my Silver Star status this month. You get twice as many VPP, albeit for paying twice the fee, but because of the slower format a higher ROI is achievable than in the turbos.

It was a lot less stressful; players were just as likely to stack off at low blind levels, but there was twice as long for them to do so, which meant twice as long for me to find a hand to get all their chips. Also, the pace of the game was slower generally, including a couple of extra seconds to decide each time the action is on you, and also a time bank of 60 seconds instead just 15 seconds in the turbos. It's basically impossible to time out, but there is also less pressure to act hastily just because a dozen or fifteen tables are demanding action at the same time. I feel that it would still be comfortable to multitable these 25 at a time, so I've decided to give that a shot this week and see if I can make a push at getting Gold after all, which was one of my goals for the month, and was something I basically gave up on a few days ago. Now it's still achieveable with about 150 games per day, which is six sessions at 25 tabling.

My mini session of non-turbos finished 13/20 for a nice little profit of $22, which means that over the day I recovered about three-quarters of the amount I lost yesterday.

Let's see what the week brings us as I grind out something ever so slightly different.

Am I cut out to cope with the variance in this game?

Well, it's already been a recurring theme in what is still a short blog, but today was more excruciating than anything I can remember. I started off with a nice little set of 14/23 for +$20, following it up with 16/23 for +$40, to make it +$60 for the day. All was going well, I was pretty happy and the games were looking good to play. Then suddenly it all went totally pear-shaped, and in my next three sets I went 8/20, 7/22 and 8/24 for -$24, -$44 and -$45 respectively. That's -$113 in just 66 games, and about three hours. So my total for the day was a confidence crushing -$52; not a lot to show for my five hours work.

The only positive is that I cleared another level in Stars' Stellar Rewards scheme, but as it's only $10, it doesn't even cover my losses for the day.

I genuinely feel I played OK today. I've already been back for a review and don't see many spots where I could do anything different, so I can't believe I've been so badly savaged when it comes to payout time. It was just short stack after short stack surviving until it came to me being the shorty, at which point I either shoved BvB into AA or had a strong hand cracked by some retarded call. And in the early part of the games it seemed that flops and action always developed unfavourably, such as raising QQ, getting called in four spots and flop coming a monochrome AKx, meaning I can't continue the hand. Or flopping something really strong, betting it, and getting called all the way by villain until they miracle something on the river.

OK, I accept that some of them have to lose, but I'm incredulous at losing so many in such a short space of time; in just three short hours I'd had my greatest peak-to-trough downswing at the $5.20s, more than 30% worse than anything which has gone before it, and my cumulative ROI had crashed by more than 1%.

If I had run at my long term average then my 112 games should have yielded a daily profit of just under $42, but the actual result of -$52.40 leaves me nearly $100 short of where I could have been predicted to finish the day. My cumulative profit for February is now a measly $48 over more than 600 games, at the rather pathetic ROI of 1.5%.

Halfway through the day I was really happy with the progress I'd made towards my goal of getting on the Sharkscope leaderboard, but now I'm over $300 behind 20th spot, when barely a few hours ago I was within $200 of getting there.

But I'm not going to give up; I know that I am so much better than the average moron who plays these games. But the difference between me and them is that they expect to lose, it's basically normal for them, so variant results are actually happy events. I just need to find a way to cope with the emotional rollercoaster that seems to closely follow my bankroll. I guess a bit more reading on the subject of tilt management is needed.

Let's hope the Saturday donks are more accommodating than the Friday donks were.

Wondering if I'll ever not suck at making myself grind...

Well at least today was worth a profit of $45, but I simply don't seem to be able to drive myself to sit down and get the hell on with playing games, and I won't run as good as I did today on a regular enough basis to get by on such paltry volmes.

Also, I somehow managed to make the most retarded play I can ever remember since I started on the path to poker enlightenment with 2+2; I'm going to post the HH so I see it, so I remember it with shame, and so I never, ever, ever do it again.

Villain has made a pot-committing raise, so he wants action, and he is also a reg who I know is definitely ahead of my AJ here. And yet I shoved back over him anyway. WHY????????????? I'm so tilted that I reshoved here, it cost me this tournament and is such an awful mistake.


PokerStars Game #xxxxxxxxxxx: Tournament #xxxxxxxxx, $5.00+$0.20 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level V (75/150) - 2010/02/17 xx:xx:xx WET [2010/02/16 xx:xx:xx ET]
Table 'xxxxxxxxx 1' 10-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Villain (955 in chips)
Seat 3: SB (1150 in chips)
Seat 4: TeamTrousers (1490 in chips)
Seat 6: UTG (4275 in chips)
Seat 7: UTG+1 (1675 in chips)
Seat 9: MP (1805 in chips)
Seat 10: CO (3650 in chips)
Villain: posts the ante 15
SB: posts the ante 15
TeamTrousers: posts the ante 15
UTG: posts the ante 15
UTG+1: posts the ante 15
MP: posts the ante 15
CO: posts the ante 15
SB: posts small blind 75
TeamTrousers: posts big blind 150
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to TeamTrousers [Jh Ac]
UTG: folds
UTG+1: folds
MP: folds
CO: folds
Villain: raises 300 to 450
SB: folds
TeamTrousers: raises 1025 to 1475 and is all-in
Villain: calls 490 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (535) returned to TeamTrousers
*** FLOP *** [4d 5d Th]
*** TURN *** [4d 5d Th] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [4d 5d Th 4c] [2h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
TeamTrousers: shows [Jh Ac] (a pair of Fours)
Villain: shows [Ah Kd] (a pair of Fours - Ace+King kicker)
Villain collected 2060 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2060 | Rake 0
Board [4d 5d Th 4c 2h]
Seat 1: Villain (button) showed [Ah Kd] and won (2060) with a pair of Fours
Seat 3: SB (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: TeamTrousers (big blind) showed [Jh Ac] and lost with a pair of Fours
Seat 6: UTG folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: UTG+1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: MP folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 10: CO folded before Flop (didn't bet)


Anyway, I've closed some of the gap on the sharkscope leaders again, now back to only a couple hundred dollars behind, and I'm very nearly at $400 profit for the year now, and that's not including bonuses, stellar, FPP etc. Not exactly the stuff of early retirement just yet, but plenty of time for this long journey.

Numbers update.

I suck at grinding hard, nowhere near as many games as I intended, but here's the year-to-date numbers anyway.

Games 1217
Wins 668
ITM 54.9%
Profit $352
ROI 5.55%

Mini milestones, and not getting lured into promos

So, after much prevarication I passed up on the $40 buyin Micro Million that Stars are doing for their 40 Billion Hands thing. I reckon I'd have an edge, considering most of the field will be morons, and it's a pretty good slow structure too (10,000 chips and 15 minutes blinds), which would really suit me as well, I know how to cope with making deep runs in MTTs because I have the experience, but the variance element of such a huge field would not be nice and it's really too much money to risk even for taking a shot. It only takes one moron to suck out, or one horrible situation. The field currently stands at 40,019 and still nine minutes left for late registration, so prize pool is over $1.6 million. Someone's gonna have a great day today, but it won't be me. Later in the year I'll play some of these type events when my bankroll isn't quite so tight as it is right now. I'll start to budget money to play some of Stars' SCOOP events in May.

So instead I'm going to be grinding DoNs all day today. I already had a nice first session today for another $26 profit, so I'm up $81 in last 2 hours. Utterly meaningless sample, but wouldn't it be nice to maintain that, $40/hr playing $5 DoNs!

Anyway, my first little landmark was hit today during my set, when I made it over the $700 lifetime profit mark for $5 DoNs. I'm actually closing in on $800 profit since I started taking them serious and also since I joined 2+2, but unfortunately I lost nearly $100 in them before I even had a clue what I was doing.

The second landmark, cleared at about the same time, is getting above the $350 profit line for 2010. It's only a little bit, but I'm glad to be heading in the right direction.

But I really need to galvanise myself into action about this volume though, because it's pathetic so far. So today I really am gonna grind my butt off, and look to get about 200 of these under my belt before I go to sleep. Sad thing is, that's only just above the average games required if I am going to hit my volume for this month.

I'm still contemplating fitting in some of the 40man SNGs which Stars are running only during this week's promo. I watched a few final tables on them at the $1.10s and they look so soft it's really ridiculous. As well as the standard payout the winners of them also split an even share of $40k. I have a pretty decent record in the 45 mans and the play will be equally LOLbad. Only downside is it will kill my volume for the month if I do.

Anyway, less blogging, more pokering! Update of numbers will be done later.


And remember, spite calling costs money.

Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money
Spite calling costs money

Back to business

Things have really got in the way of me playing and posting for the last few days, but I finally managed to get back on the tables this evening. 60 games so far, and I will play another session when I've posted this. Only problem now is I still can't beat the donks. Pretty sure I'm just continuing to run into bad situations, but I'm already down another $17 so far today.

A couple of useful little bumps for the bankroll have come courtesy of the $40 for 2500 FPP instant cash credit which is on offer in Stars' VIP store as part of its 40 billionth hand promotion, and also $50 from the new year reload bonus which I just cleared in the last set. But so far I'm $21 down for February from actual play, and I'm drifting further and further away from getting on the bottom of the Sharkscope leaderboard for YTD profits from $5 DoNs, which is really annoying me. Top spot has barely moved this month, and is still only just over $1100 profit, but 20th is now $585, which is nearly $300 more than I have so far from these.

Also, I'm not even close to my target for games this month. My goal was to be averaging 100-a-day, so I should be >1200 by now, but in fact I've only played 333, barely more than ¼ of what it should be. If I'm gonna play this Gold VIP tourney in two weeks time I need to hike it up to 171 games every day for the rest of the month. I also need to try and get best value from my VIP stuff by playing the weekly $30k tomorrow for only 100FPP.

This is going to be tough, but I really need to start disciplining myself. Even if I don't hit any of my other goals (profit, regular play/posting and leaderboard) then I'm sure as hell going to hit my volume goal, because that's the one thing I do have control over. It's peanuts really, but playing those games will also release another $30 of Stellar rewards, even if I don't buy them from the store yet. I think I'll save them for a big chunk later in the year when it will really make a difference to my roll to get them. I can't believe that if I hit that volume I will still be down on profit for the month, because if I am then something has seriously gone wrong with my game. If the results continue like this for the net 500 games then I will need to take a massive look at what has changed.


Games 1098
Wins 600
ITM 54.6%
Profit $290
ROI 5.1%

OMG, some of those figures are depressing!

Knowledge is power

So, I realise that I didn't post yesterday, but after yesterday's single session I was pretty pissed off about the way the results were going, and I really started to think I might have developed a major leak, instead of just running bad. Despite checking through the games I had played I couldn't find anything obvious, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. So I decided I needed more information. I knew that it was time to bite the bullet, and get some proper software to analyse my game in detail. So, having wasted my trial of HEM a few months ago when I had a strop because it didn't work immediately, and instead of wasting time continuing to whinge on a blog about how awful my life is (which it isn't) and how bad I run at the tables (which is in truth merely an unconfirmed rumour), I downloaded the trial of PT3 instead, and spent the whole night getting my archive of all my hand histories in order and then manually importing the $5 DoN games into the PostgreSQL database. I knew there was a reason I had kept them all, and this was it! I think I finally crawled into bed around 8am.

So, I'm now the proud owner of over 100,000 hands all neatly loaded up in and ready to filter in a zillion different ways.

The first thing I realised is just how many different opponents there are out there, and how small is the number of people I see on a regular basis. I think that out of just over 2,500 games, the most I've seen the same opponent is about 60 games. I've seen >13,000 different SNs at the tables in that time, and the huge majority of them have only been seen on a single occasion. And there are only maybe two or three dozen who I have sat with in more than 20 games.

This means that there is, and will continue to be, very little time to accurately profile most villains and assign them some ranges, so I will have to refine and improve the default ranges I use for randoms and improve the way in which I use them for my equity calculations.

The second thing I realised is how chips flow into and out of my stack during a typical game. On average, I only win chips in the first two levels (BB2o and BB30), while I slowly lose them through the rest of the game. In fact, in all games (which obviously includes losses where my cumulative chip count is -1,500) I tend to lose chips at a rate of about 6 chips per hand throughout the game. Comparison with some of the other guys in the DoN group shows that this seems to be a typical profile for a winning reg. So that's an encouraging start!

It puts into numbers for me what I've read on 2+2 about how chips flow away from 'safe' stacks once the game becomes push/fold. And I love numbers. People can twist words, and use them to misrepresent something, but once you look carefully you simply can't argue with numbers. They are a fact.

Of course, no real game will ever look anything like these averages, but it gives an good insight into how the table dynamics develop. The important thing is that poker is not about one hand, or one game. It's about the long term, and making good decisions thousands and thousands of times so that eventually you reap the benefits of correct play.

The corollary is that if good players are slowly losing chips through the tournament then the players who are on average winning them must be bad players. After all, there are always 15,000 chips on the table, someone has to own them and it isn't the good players. It sounds idiotic to think that way, but remember; to win chips you have to risk chips, and risking chips is not ideal in a DoN game, which is basically an exercise in survival. So the guys who have the most chips must have risked the most chips and are therefore bad.

Suddenly the whole 'donk big stack' thing on the bubble makes much more sense now. Of course. These are the morons from whom we win our chips in the early levels. Usually they bust out spectacularly with garbage hands, but occasionally those garbage hands win, and they survive. They continue to win chips in the later stages of the game because they continue to risk them. But most of the time they don't last long enough. It's these occasional tastes of victory which keep the fish coming back.

Even as I write this post I am understanding some things which I knew intellectually to be true, because better players than myself had told me, but I didn't 'get' why they were true. Now I 'get' it. There is still a long way to go; the things I have discovered today only begin to scratch the surface, but I hope that I will be able to learn to use this vast information resource to improve my game further. My regret is that I didn't do this a long time ago.

I think the next step will be getting familiar with using the information from the HUD, which is integral to PT3, to better profile villains when I am considering shoves or calls. I am looking forward to that, because with 20 tables open it can become a little tricky to keep track of who is who.

Thanks to all in the group today who input useful stuff as I was familiarising myself with PT3: Alex, Bryan, Chris, Wurly, Kevin.

I'll probably switch to HEM anyway in the near future, as everyone rates it above PT3, but wanted to trial something like it just to see what I'd get, and I'm definitely impressed.

I also had a few games today (it's still Sunday until I go to bed), so I'll do a quick recap. First, the good news, I was slightly profitable in each of three little sessions, to a total of about $30. This covers some of the losses of the last few days, but not all. Because yesterday I was down $11, and Thursday down $52, which still leaves me in the red for February. I have also only played about half of the games I should have played for my monthly goals. As real life this coming week is gong to be a bit busy I will really need to use every minute I can for game time just to stand still, then catch up the shortfall next week to stay on target for my February goal. Also today I broke through 1,000 games for the year.



Games 1,017
Wins 557
ITM 54.8%
Profit $282
ROI 5.3%


Finally, congrats to the Saints on their win in the SuperBowl earlier today; I know that a couple of the guys were pretty happy about that. I won't profess to understand the game, but as long as people have fun that's gotta be a good thing.

Nothing to see here

Still gonna throw in a quick post, even though I'm not playing any games today. Circumstances outside of poker have made it impossible for me to stick to my original goal of playing every day this month. The other goals for the month still hold though, and I should be back on the virtual felt tomorrow.

I'm a little confused

At the end of January all was well in my nice cosy little DoN-grinding world. I won about half my races. Four times out of five my pocket aces would hold. And all those 70/30s? Well, someone would only bink the ace about 30% of the time, meaning the rest of the time my pair would win through.

Now the last few days have shattered that somewhat idyllic illusion. Seems I can't hit a thing. After a string of losing sessions I've spent more time today reviewing games than I have spent playing them. I've spent ages on the stove playing with ranges. Hours were invested in looking to see what shoves I might have missed. I came up thinking that I'd just pretty much run bad; either +EV hands were not holding up at showdown, or I was always shoving my SB into someone holding KK+. I'm not saying that I played every hand absolutely perfect, but there weren't any obvious and glaring errors which I could see being repeated over and over again. So I loaded up a session for today and figured it would all work out in the long term as long as I put in the effort.

90 minutes later nothing had changed, and I was another 10 buyins down. So I quit after less than 40 games. Once again I reviewed the games to see what was wrong, and I still can't see anything. I've even started wondering about some of my fundamental views about this game, views which have seen me through nearly 10,000 DoNs with a profit which I consider decent, even if it is nothing outstanding. But this year I've played almost 1,000 games, at a profit per game of little more than half of what my long-term rate was at the start of the year. My long-term profit per game is now down to 80% of what it was on 1st January.

For the time being I have to just keep telling myself it's variance, and it will work out. I wouldn't say I'm on tilt about all of this, more that I'm a little down about how the results have gone despite my play. I'll confess to one tilty call right near the end of my session today, when I had KK and there was an ace on the flop and I lost half my stack to Villain's value bet on the river even though I knew he had the ace. But generally I wouldn't say I'm easily put on monkey-tilt, because I know in my heart that I'm still making mostly good plays.

Anyway, to give myself a bit of respite from the doom and gloom I decided to play a set of ten of standard STTs instead of DoNs, the 10-man $3.40 turbos which Stars run. I was (sort of) disciplined about doing it, in that I decided I was totally prepared to lose the whole $34 it was going to cost me, without needing to reg for more to "win my money back" if they all went pear-shaped and I didn't cash at all. I was considering it as entertainment to allow my brain to have a bit of a freeroll to get over the bad beats I feel I'm taking in the DoNs. If I cashed in any of them and got some money back then I would just consider that I was getting my entertainment a little cheaper than I expected. I'd still get a small handful FPPs back as well.

These were the first "normal" STTs I had played in a long time and at first I had to keep reminding myself of things like the fact that here I could be aggressive with AK in the early rounds instead of open folding it, or mentally prodding myself to remember that JJ doesn't necessarily have to be setmined or folded. And all the other stuff that goes along with a game where the aim is to actually win chips instead of just trying to avoid haemorrhaging them.

After I got over that little mental block I started to feel comfortable, and once a couple of the got to the bubble I suddenly realised how bad the play still is in some of these games. It actually amazed me to see how tight people are even in these once the bubble approaches, trying to limp into the cash.

Once I'd pegged who were the regs and who were the donks it was all pretty much ABC, and I managed to cash 4 of the 10 games, and bubbling a fifth. 40% cash rate was actually more than my set of DoNs for the day, LOL.

I ended up with two 3rds and two 1st, which meant not only did I allow my brain a bit of entertainment but I also cashed for $42, for a profit of $8 on the set. I know it's not exactly the stuff of millionaire's row, but it was nice anyway, felt particularly good to be taking down both the games which I got to heads-up.

That's it for me for today though. I will start again tomorrow refreshed and sure in the knowledge that good plays will mean good results in the long term.

Same shit, different day

Can't be bothered to do a rehash of yesterday's post. Today ran almost the same, only the suckouts were far worse. My only goal for tomorrow is to run better. Need to get a decent volume going too.

See you later, I'm done for this day.

What a bleh day...

I guess I'll have to get used to running like crap on occasion, but today really sucked. I lost count of how many times some donkey cracked my AA with utter shite like Q8o, not even like they had KK and binked a set! And then to compound the misery I also lost count of how often I shoved KK/QQ into AA; of course no suckouts for me! Why do all the donks get all the breaks?

The whole day was totally bloody ridiculous, and was summed up by the last game to finish; it went all the way to a big blind of t1000. Shorty after shorty was surviving with ridiculous hands; thankfully I was never shorty, of course I wouldn't have won a mandatory all-in the way I ran today. At least I cashed that one.

I've given up on getting to the target which I set myself yesterday of playing 150 games today, I just can't face any more right now. Plenty of time wasted overall today, and down $7 to boot.

Games 874
Wins 487
ITM 55.7%
Profit $325
ROI 7.2%

Got my first daily set done

Well, I said I'd play every day this month, and having got home at midnight, I forced myself to sit and play a couple of hours. An OK session, slightly behind my year-to-date, but still, it was another session in profit, which is a good result. And I got through 48 games, half my daily quota for this month, on what was always gonna be a short day because of bowling. But having reviewed it I think I'm still missing a few spots to shove and pick up blinds, so a few things to tighten up tomorrow.

At least I ran better on the felt than I did on the lanes (453 ftl, and low man drop for next week). Probably for the best though, means I can grind more next Monday night.

Nothing on tomorrow, so it should be a big grinding day (by my standards). I want a minimum 150 games.

Here's how we stand so far this year.

Games 813
Wins 456
ITM 55.5%
Profit $332
ROI 6.8%

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."

Lao Zi said that 2,500 years ago in his classic text, Tao Te Ching. Clever chap, in my opinion. Really knew his stuff. I wonder if he could have done all 100,000 steps to Supernova though?

Grinding really is a grind. Today is what I expect will become typical of chase – nothing exciting, nothing alarming either. Games were played, and profit was achieved at about my average rate. Two sessions, the second had double the games for double the profit. All pretty dull stuff really, but the whole point of the challenge is to grind through all that, and hopefully find the pot of gold.

I've just had a browse through the players currently atop the SS profit leaderboard for $5 DoNs. Five of them play on small networks, and probably pwn the tables there, but the other 15 are all on Pokerstars. Of all the Stars players on there, only three of them are actually ahead of me on how much they profit per game, and two of those three play the non-turbos. The rest are all ahead of me only because of volume played. It just gives me an idea of the sort of numbers I need to be putting in to get ahead of this game.

So far this month I've only managed about 46 hours of play. That's about one week's work, but it's taken me four weeks to do it. Even worse, nearly half of those hours were spent on short sets where I played 15 or fewer games. All that time wasted not only on a small number of tables, but also on the loading up and running down time at the beginning and end of each set.

I really should be able to maintain around 25 games per hour without unduly straining my decision making, so the number of games I have played should only have taken me about 30 hours, which means about a third of that time was in effect wasted time. If I had put in a "full" month, and assuming I won at my current rate, I'd be top of that leaderboard by a decent margin. I'd also be a Gold star VIP already and be earning a decent sideline in FPPs in February. I really have to start getting proper amounts of hours in, with a full stack of tables.

In addition to my current outstanding goal of making the SS leaderboard, which should follow naturally if I put in the volume, I have decided to set the following goals.

1) To play at least one set every day in February.
2) To post updates of at least the numbers at the end of each day.
3) Play the 100 FPP $30k VIP tournaments each Saturday
4) To make Gold Star in time to play the freeroll $100k VIP tournament at 2000 hrs on the last Saturday of the month (Feb 27th).

The last one is the one which will start to stretch me. I will need to play 2,728 DoNs to do this, in 26 days, at an average of 105 games per day. This is far in excess of what I have managed in January, although there have been other distractions which hopefully will not be there next month. This will begin to approach the sort of volumes I need to hit on a regular basis if I want to achieve my long term goals.

If I can put in that volume then I should be able to clear a pretty decent profit just from the games. I would also release $150 from reload bonuses, and earn around another $50 worth of FPP. If I can do it in February then I should be in a habit by then , and I can repeat it in March, by which time I should be able to set aside enough of a bankroll to make a start on the 10s. I'd also be earning double FPP all of March as a Gold Star.

If I make it up to the 10s then a little more effort per day on average will see me make Platinum on a monthly basis, again increasing my FPP earnings because I will be getting 2.5x instead of the 2x at Gold. That should see me picking up over 15,000 FPP a month, plus the increase in profits from playing a higher stakes game.

If I can get up to the 20s by the end of May I should still be able to maintain a comfortable pace to make Supernova by the end of the year even if I don't move up to 50s at all. Supernova will be worth $1k of Stellar Rewards, another $1k for the 100k VPP milestone bonus, and I would still have enough FPP to buy the $1,500 bonus for 150k FPP, plus maybe a little bit more. So at least $3.5k in cashback, plus any more reload bonuses, plus anything I get from the weekly and monthly VIP donkaments, plus profit from games, obviously. Don't quite know for certain how much it will all add up to yet, but a lot better than sitting around doing nothing all day.

Making Supernova would mean next year would be massive for me, because that would give me the 3.5x FPP multiplier from day one. Then I could start to look at purchasing a $4k bonus sometime during 2011, thus getting the full 1.6c value for each of my FPPs. Maybe even shoot for 200k VPP and get the $3,400 milestone bonus. Would still be less than 1,000 games / week at the 20s, which is very doable. Plus it would unlock access to the $1M VIP donkaments which are held quarterly. Average equity is about $200 per player in each of the tournaments, which adds up to $800 free equity for the year. Pretty good stuff imo. Binking one of those would be absolutely awesome.

But all of that is still a long way off; let's not get so carried away with the long term goals that I forget to focus on what needs to be done in the short term, which is to get the volumes going up pretty quickly.

I thought I'd put all these numbers out here now to emphasise how much work there will be in this grind, to motivate myself to build up the momentum because of the rewards which are there for those who put in the work. I realise that this will not be easy, and it needs to be done at a good constant speed. I can't leave this to a rush at the end all the time, it needs to be approached as a year long project. Getting there will mean I've played between 30,000 and 35,000 of these things, and it will mean around 40 hours per week, just like a "normal" job.

I know I have the ability to do this, I just need to make sure I have the dedication, determination, drive, desire and all those other things that are important in this.

Let's finish off with my year to date numbers. I have now nudged over $300 profit for the year so far, which is decent considering how much (or rather how little) I've played. I finished the day up another $33, but once again not enough volume, only 55 games over the course of two sessions in three hours.

Games 765
Wins 429
ITM 56.1%
Profit $312
ROI 7.8%

Running unbelievably bad

Losing pretty much every hand really sucks, but that's basically what happened in the second half of the day. First (mini) session went fine. Won 11/18, didn't get lucky to do so either, in fact I probably was unlucky not to get more wins. $16 profit, but should have been more.

Second session was two hours of torture, particularly at the end. Couldn't win a ****ing thing. Of the last seven games, where I was a favourite to cash in all of them, somehow only managed to win 1/7. Makes a massive difference, $20 down instead of $40 up. Maybe should expect to lose one of them, but even so, should have been $30 up.

Down by $4 overall on the day.

Here's the numbers so far

Games 710
Wins 397
ITM 55.9%
Profit $278
ROI 7.5%

Silver star achieved, and a little profit too

So, I just now ground out the last few VPPs required for Silver Star this month in a nice little session, 39 games in 1¾ hours, for about $46 profit. Pretty bad that it's taken me this long.

Good thing is that my VPPs will now be earning 1½ FPPs, and I can start making something approaching proper rakeback now too. Also it's clearing my various bonuses, which is also more money to look forward to. Definitely got to aim for Gold status next month, 100 games per day average should be a cinch. It should also translate to over $1k real profit if I can get my head on straight, and that doesn't include all those lovely FPPs

Really starting to feel good about grinding this stuff now, just need to make sure I put in enough hours on a regular basis to make it worth while. Out of my last 20 sessions, I've only been down after two of them, one by only the rake in a tiny 10 game block where I cashed 5 times, the other that awful session two days ago where I was $55 down. I take it as a good sign that I'm mostly winning.

Here's how we're looking right now for the year so far

Games 665
Wins 374
ITM 56.2%
Profit $282
ROI 8.2%

As for the Sharkscope leaderboard, it looks like I simply need to be putting in more volume. As my profit goes up, so 20th spot gets a little further away. I recognise a few names on there though, none of them seem all that much, so just keep on going I guess.