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.
Monday 31 May 2010
Friday 21 May 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday 12 May 2010
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.
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.......
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.......
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