November Wrap Up and December Goals

Before I post results for the month of December, I'd just like to blog about what is happening in the Senate in regards to the future of online poker. In 2006, a bill was passed (UIGEA) which would prohibit US players from playing online poker. UIGEA states that it is illegal for financial institutions to accept or send money to online gambling sites. Long story short, this weekend the Senate is voting on a bill that would regulate online gambling in the United States in the near future. The official bill hasn't found its way online yet, but I'm sure it will later this weekend. More information can be found here on twoplustwo.

I'm ecstatic about the possibility of this passing so soon. The second poker boom could happen in the next year or two. My favorite quote of the year:

"Michelle Minton, Director of the Insurance Studies project at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, supports Sen. Reid's change of heart. "Not only is a ban impossible, but legalizing the activity could result in increased tax revenue, job creation and economic growth," said Minton. "While some politicians might personally find online wagering distasteful, it is not their job to babysit adult Americans, especially when almost every state has some form of legalized land-based gambling such as casinos and state lotteries."

Okay now on to results for November. They aren't as solid as I would have hoped, but I only put in half of the volume I was aiming for. The month started out fantastic. Alain and I brought down over 500 during our first lockdown of the month. Things were looking great as I was well on pace for one of my biggest months ever. Then apparently the cashout curse (lol) decided to come along and spoil the fun.



Addicted19 had another solid month as well:



My goals for this month are to play 1,000 games. I'm going to create a schedule that will force me to play so I can achieve this goal. I'm playing the 3s again because I had to cashout for bills and such, but I could be playing the 6s (if I wasn't such a br nit).

Good luck in December, and keep your fingers crossed about the bill being passed this weekend.

-LUCKBOX

"One Time"

November Lockdown v1

As you may know, Alain and I are setting pretty lofty goals for the rest of the year in terms of volume. To help accomplish this, we are going to have to take part in a series of lockdowns where we play long sessions. Today we had a smallish lockdown where we both played for ~8 hours.

The results:

Name Games ROI Profit

Addicted19 62 104% $307

OMG its LUCKBOX 79 57% $231

Lockdown 1 Totals 141 80.5% $538

Graphs:

Addicted19

OMG its LUCKBOX

Definitely pleased about the results, its about time we both had a decent lockdown. I would definitely contribute our run-good to the late night HH review session we had last night. Reviewing your game is crucial, almost as crucial as winning flips at final tables :)

All in all, today was definitely a success. I can't wait to move up to playing the 6s and 13s. Hopefully I'll be up there by the end of the month (crosses fingers)

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX

Goals for the rest of 2010

I just wanted to put in a little update with how I've been playing, and what my goals are for the rest of this year. I'm at the point in my poker career were I need to decide if I want to continue being a recreational player with decent results, or if I want to become a poker player. It is so easy to have a lackadaisical mindset when we are thinking about or playing poker, but this is the exact opposite of what we should have if we want to become successful.

Poker is a beautiful thing. What other job can you have where you can play (not work), whenever you want, from the comfort of your own home, and make more than almost all hourly jobs? Not to mention if you are an MTT pro and you bink a $25,000 first place, or if you are a 1/2NL cash grinder making over 30k a year in rakeback + bonuses and your winrate. I don't want people to know this but if you work hard, poker could easily make you over 50k a year. That isn't a ton, not enough to raise a family on, but once you reach that point in your career, you are playing higher and higher stakes. Going from making 10k a year to making 50k in a year is a huge jump. But jumping from 50k to 100k isn't huge.

I've always been passionate about playing poker. I quit my job for a few months to play 1-3 NL live and did pretty well for myself. I've played well over 1 million hands playing micro cash games, and almost 7,000 sng's. I can't stand going into work and making 14$ an hour (if I get tipped well), when I can sit at home and make double that whenever I want. Maybe I can't support myself fully from poker, there is nothing that says I can't try. And that is what I'm going to do.

Last month I palyed almost 50k hands of fullring and made ~$850 at 25nl. Took 3 shots at 50nl and dropped 5bi's running 4 bi's below EV. This month I'm going to go back to grinding the 90 mans. I've proven to myself that I can beat cash, and thats all I wanted to accomplish last month. I'm going to grind the sng's until the games get bad, then transition to cash. I honestly believe that I could beat 100nl much easier than I could beat the 25nl games. People are much worse at poker, and much harder to assign them ranges.

Either way, my goal is to become a poker pro by the end of 2011. To accomplish this I'm going to need to be playing the 6s, 13s, and 26s. I'd like to start the year rolled enough to mix 6s and 13s so I'd like to make $3,000 between now and Dec. 31st. I don't like having goals based on monetary values because there is a little variance involved in sng's o:) So my real goal for myself is to play 2,000 games between now and December 31st. That is a lot of playing, but most of the month of December I'll be out of school, and I've got a good class schedule that allows me to play long hours when I don't have class.

Next year, I'm going pro.

Luckbox

grind time

Im about to start a 45 man low stakes (3.25, 6.50) grind on pstars and hoping to play out 200 games. Haven't played these in awhile so curious as to how I do.

Goals for 27th oct- december 31st

Just wanted to write down some goals to hopefully make them a reality and be motivated enough to achieve them.

Profit goal for next two months : 10k

volume goal : at least 4000 sngs/mtts

How I will achieve this will be mainly playing the 90s on ftp along with some mtts, and some play on pokerstars at the 45s/180s/mtts.

I think this will set me up nicely for the beginning of 2011 where I want to focus my attention to cash and rise up the limits.

Must update this blog with an update every week about how things are going.

From Donk to a Stud: The Hughezy Story

When we started working with Hughezy1, our goal as coaches was to get his lifetime graph into the green. We had him for 2,000 games and we thought we had a very good chance of him making almost $1 a game. It wasn't until we started coaching him that this dream became a reality. But it wasn't just us that turned his graph from looking like a fish to a true grinder.

Tim (Hughezy1) is a very driven motivated and driven poker player. Every coaching session he would show us hands that troubled him and we would do our best to help him to the best of our knowledge. He constantly asked us why we were telling him to play how he was playing. This is the most important thing we must do as poker players and in life for that matter. We shouldn't just go through the motions because someone tells us what is right. I know there was some point in his series of lessons where we shoved 72o. I'm pretty sure villain woke up with AA, but thats besides the point. He trusted our judgment and started looking for smaller and smaller edges.

Now the results:

Hughezy1's lifetime graph

Hughezy1's SNG Graph during our coaching period:

Over 2,000 games, he profited $1,410 over 2,000 games playing mainly the $3 and $6 SNG's. He also had a 22% ROI. He had very minimal SNG knowledge when we started, but like I mentioned before, he really worked very hard and put in a sick amount of volume.

I just wanted to thank him for being such a great student, and I wish him luck in the future.

Thanks Tim,

Luckbox

Hughezy the Hero

Hughezy runs good. Good is an understatement. In the last two months he has completely turned his graph around from looking like Darvin Moon's lifetime graph before his lotto-like 4.5$ million dollar bink, to a solid grinder (he isn't crushing like me, but better). I dislike typing, so I lucratively outsourced this blog post to Hughezy. I'd like to turn it over to him. I asked him to tell us a little about his history and what he has enjoyed about the coaching thus-far.

Take it away Tim:

"I'm a 42 yr old retired Police Officer and in keeping with my generation, a complete computer idiot. So, having to write, save and send this is a real pain in the ass...Thx OMG! I started playing poker in 2007. I have always been a casino goer and used to enjoy blowing thousands at Blackjack.

One Friday night I noticed a large crowd sitting down for A £10 r/b and sat down...10 rebuys later I was pretty muched hooked. For the fist 15 to 18 months I only played live and was the biggest fish ever. I played like a rock waiting for premium hands and had limited success. In Sept 2008 I got hugely lucky in a £250 live f/o final tabling and eventually finishing 2nd for just under £5k ( at that time 10k us ). I thought at that time that I had made it and was a good player ( how wrong I was lol ) and from the confidence of the win went and bought in 2 weeks later to the GUKPT ME (£1k buyin) and the Gala CBMT ME (£1.5k Buyin) some weeeks later. I busted out of the first with a real donk play but folded my way into Day 2 of the second before losing with AA v KK. Anyhoo..The first table I sat at in Blackpool I was sat next to this 6'5" german kid who clearly knew what he doing. We got chatting and had a real laugh. He had qualified online for the event and my £5k bink impressed him. During the course of the conversation he asked where I played online..I hadn't even considered playing online and he went on to recommend the usual sites and I began to enter the online world.

Once again I hit it lucky.I managed to FT the 5$ 20kgtd on stars and chip chopped 4 handed for $2.1k and the same day FT'd a $24 on FTP for nearly $800. "This is fucking eeeezy" I thought. Unfortunately those were the only notable successes. My donk play was catching up with me and I was almost alwasy the biggest fish on the table. I couldn't multi table and playing 1/2 tourneys for a min cash, if I was lucky, ceased to be fun. It was around this time that I accepted that I wasn't a poker genius and invested in Harrington On Holdem. I read both books and didn't understand wtf he was on about..I realised I didn't know the first thing about poker whatsoever. In March this year I was surfing the net and came accross a certian well known SNG grinders site. I was inspired. I knew I had to 'go back to school' so to speak and learn how to multi table for volume purposes. I started on the $4.40 180's and $2.20 180 turbos on stars.

I read strategy articles and started posting hands on 2+2. I immediatly started on a heater racking up over $1k at these stakes. It was posting of hands on 2+2 that led to me making contact with OMG its LUCKBOX. I was posting 4/5 hands per day there and a member thought I was taking the piss by asking such elementary questions and flamed me. OMG cam to my defence and contact was made. I had made the jump to 90 man KO's on FTP. I started adding tables in order to get my volume up. At the start of this coaching contract I was barely able to 5 table..over 1000 games later in I can easily handle up to 12...Such a difference.

Prior to starting the contract I had discussions with OMG and Addicted19. When they said they felt confident that could make me, a donk, into a winning player I jumped at the chance but stated I wanted to sart at the lowest levels and learn from the ground up, so to speak.The guys have the ability to explain in lay-amns terms the principles, strategies and reasons behind them for the 90 mans so much so that even I understood them. They're also great ppl to just 'chew the fat' with.

I look forward to each coaching session and always learn something new which I am able to apply to my game with positive and immediate results. I have become a winning player after only 1000 tourneys aking my Sharkscope from red to black. I now aim to play 40-60 tourneys a day and my goals are to keep climbing the stakes. I starated with $280 in my FTP BR and am now nearly rolled for 12's allwith OPM (other ppl's money). I am proud to say I am a winning player and its alldown to Addicted19 amd OmG...I cant thank you two enuf....

Peace"

Hughezy1's lifetime graph:

Hughezy1's SNG graph since coaching:

Congratulations Hughezy1, we are both very pleased with your progress and are excited to keep seeing you crush for the rest of the contract.

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX

New Student! Welcome LOL DARVIN MOON.

I wanted to welcome our second student, LOL DARVIN MOON. Although he isn't really Darvin Moon, in less than a week he'll be better than Darvin(not a huge brag, just like being able to count to 10, but it is still a brag).

We are starting him from ground zero and he has very little poker experience. I am confident that within two months we will have him crushing the games. I'm actually a little jealous because it took me 4 years of teaching myself how to play sng's before I met Alain. He tweaked some major leaks in my game and has pointed me in the right direction. It is going to take Matt(LOL DARVIN MOON) four months to get where I am now.

He is going to be playing the 1$/45s and then moving the fulltilt when his roll will let him. I'll update his own page soon.

Welcome Matt.

Downswings, Darvin Moon, and Obama

I've got some great news and some horrible news. Unless you've been living under a box for the last two years, you have undoubtably heard the name Obama. Now I don't want this to turn into a verbal war of subtle blows between the President of the United States and me. If you don't know anything about Obama <=== click here. Not only has he tried to turn our country into Socialist Cuba, he has convinced Full Tilt that we need to redistribute wealth.

I've seen some sick downswings, but I've never experienced it first hand. This month I lost 80+ buy ins in a row. The important thing is, I'm not busto. One of the best things we can do as poker players is to use our bankroll management skills and just play through it. If we just try to play through it without analyzing our game, we are making a huge mistake. When we can't seem to win, we need to study more than we normally do. Besides coaching Hughezy1 and going over hands with Addicted19 almost daily, we should also go over hands on our own. Making our own decisions is more important than getting advice from other winning players. When we make our own theories and bounce them off other players, we are all going to profit in the long run.

Before I reveal the visual proof of Obama and Full Tilt and their Socialist ways, I'd like to remind us how important bankroll management. I have a manager at work who is really into sports gambling (I don't support it, but I guess you can make informed decisions based on statistics slightly like poker?). Last month he cashed 5k, which isn't a bad month by any stretch of imagination. The only problem is when he bets, he will put at least 1/2 of his bankroll in play on one game. If he loses two games, his account is busto. If you are going to gamble, you need to have some bankroll management rules. If I didn't drop down limits, my account would be completely busto:

On a much happier note, I'm pleased to inform you the addition of our second student to our coaching program. His username is LOL DARVIN MOON on fulltilt where he will be playing the 90 mans once he grinds up his roll on pokerstars playing the 45mans. He has never played online poker before, and has very limited live experience. He is starting from scratch. It is going to take him 4 months to get where it took me to get in 4 years.

Things seemed to have clicked for Hughezy1. This is a picture of his roll, we started coaching him at game 1,000:

Last night we had a 3 player lockdown and I will be posting the results within the next few days. Good luck at the tables.

Luckbox

Lockdown 1

Last night we decided to do a lockdown (a lockdown means you have to stay in one place and load games for a certain amount of time). We started at 11 PM on Tuesday night and loaded games until 6 AM Wednesday morning. 7 hours of loading games isn't bad for our first lockdown considering the circumstances.

Both of us had trouble getting things going, which resulted in a negative total profit for our first lockdown. Long story short, we both ran very bad. If we would have won just one more flip, we could have easily shown a solid profit. Next lockdown we are going to hope for some better results:

Addicted19's Lockdown 1 Results:

OMG its LUCKBOX's Lockdown 1 Results:

Lockdown 2 has already been scheduled and we will update here when it has been completed.

Our first student! Welcome Hughezy1

I'm pleased to announce the addition of our first student, hughezy1. We are going to be coaching him for 2,000 games playing mainly the 90 man SNG's. I will keep his page updated weekly with his results, that page can be found here.

I am very confident in our ability to have him crushing the 90 mans by the time he is done with us, and hopefully we can renegotiate a new profit share and keep coaching him. I'm very excited to get started and I can't wait to see the results. Welcome to the team hughezy1!

If you agree to the terms on your page, please comment here to verify.

Sunday Funday

-Addicted19

Every online player knows how big every sunday is. Games load the fastest/more fish which should translate to more money. I typically load for about 6 hours and aim to play a long session however today I was running on no sleep so cut my session short. Despite that I finally took down a 180 man and regained some confidence that I had lost in my downswing. I still have a ways to go and really need to push myself these next few weeks and put in as much volume as possible. Im moving up a level in the 90s this week and hopefully it will turn out well.

The shot heard 'round the world.

-OMG its LUCKBOX

Ok so maybe not everyone heard it, and it certainly didn't start a revolution from England, but I'm sure it was the talk on cake poker last night as I was playing 50nl. I'm pretty sure after the first few times I was stacked, players from fulltilt were making accounts on cake just to sit down at my table...

Two nights ago I final tabled a 5$ rebuy on Cake in second place with chips. Not much happened and three players were knocked out. Finally I decided to open kjo in the Hijack (place two to the right of the button) because the table was playing tighter than airport security after 9/11.

Two callers, one shortstack, and the deepstack - who was awful btw. The only reason he was still in the tournament was because he successfully cracked aa with his 55. He minbet/shoved 40 bb w/ a gutshot (Darvin Moon?) and was snapped by top-set, only to river his gutshot.

So the flop was 973 Rainbow and they both checked to me. There was ~50k in the pot and I bet 27k. Darvin called.

Turn was a 4 that put a flushdraw on the board. Not the best card for me, but personally I thought he could easily be floating any broadway hands, maybe have 55, 66, 88, etc. Still I don't think he could continue with a 9 to a barrel, not for all of his chips.

I was wrong. I bet like like 59k when he checked to me on this random card. He tanked and shipped it. It was a good play, if he was a thinking player, sadly he was not. I mucked after giving him 1/2 of my chips and he said he had 109. Next hand I shipped a7 and was called by 77 and 1010 and was knocked out for a measly $150. (First was a cool $880. One day soon I'll ship my first donkament.

On top of that I made about 100 playing 20nl that night on cake.

So last night I decided to take a shot at 50nl because I was rolled for it, and cake is the softest site on the planet. However I didn't know I would get stacked set over straight, Straight over straight, and aa vs ak aipf. (plus a few buy ins of tilt, sigh).

I didn't win a single hand at showdown last night. So now, for the moment you've all been waiting for...

Given the sexy results of my amazing session last night. I'm doing a lockdown tonight.

Update on Sunday.

Stay hydrated Arizona,

Luckbox

Mid-June Update - Turn up the Heat(er)

-OMG its LUCKBOX

Tomorrow, June 16, 2010 - The high in Arizona is going to be 103. I'm glad I live in Ohio - home of... nothing. Actually we do have a nature exhibit residing in the backyard, we just installed a bird-feeder, because that's what nice people do, they feed birds. In the 15 years I've lived at this house, we've had 5+ bird feeders, all claiming to be squirrel-proof. None of them have stood the test to the furry tree jumping rats.

Squirrel Swing Buffet:

As much as I'd like to talk about hot it has been this summer and my plans for the squirrel catapult I have under construction, this is a poker blog and I'm not a good enough writer to make talking about the weather interesting, so I'll stick to poker.

So far this month I've had pretty decent results. About a week ago I decided that I've had enough of stars and their doom-switch shenanigan's (read more about that here). I moved my roll onto Full Tilt and started grinding. I have been very pleased with the results. I'm a visual person, so instead of explaining my heater in words, I'll shut up now...

Now the numbers: 42% ROI - 175 games - $223 profit. I would have liked to get in at least 250 games/week so that I can reach $1,000 per month over the summer. This is in addition to working 25 hours delivering pizza's and golfing as much as possible. I know that I can keep my winrate up and would like to see my ROI get up to 50%. $1.5/game would make me a very happy player.

Goals for the rest of the month:

1. Play 400 more sng's.
2. Keep reviewing hands with Addicted19
3. Profit $500
4. Move to the $6.50s by the second week of July

Also, I'm going to keep playing cash games on cake when I don't have time to load up a bunch of SNGs to work on my game for when I start playing live again. Sometime in the very near future, we are going to be looking for students to start at the micros and work up with us. Keep checking back here regularly and I'll make another post about this when we start accepting applications.

Stay hydrated Arizona,

LUCKBOX

It's been awhile

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my previous blog)

Original post date 6/10/10

Freedom! My life for the last few months has been crazy. Not just poker, everything. Between delivering pizza's, playing golf, seeing friends, finishing classes, and spending time with my friends, I haven't had much time to put into this blog. By the end of the summer I hope to be a better poker player as I continue to develop my skills.

I'm back to SNG's again (If you haven't noticed I switch between cash and SNG's faster than Tiger Wood's switches from his wife to cocktail waitresses). I just wanted to give an update on how I've done so far in SNG's in my poker career.

I've never been a degenerate. I'm a bankroll nit. When people whine about having to play the 3$ sng's I just laugh. I've played over 2,000 games at the 1$/45s on stars (thats a beat, not a brag). I've played as high as the 6/45s with breakeven results. But most importantly, I'm a consistent winner. This is where we find our confidence when we play.

Confidence is one of the most important things a poker player must have (besides the obvious self control to prevent tilting, and a bladder that works 55 minutes past the hour, every hour). Confidence not only makes us play our A game more often, but also helps keep our minds clear when making decisions. This is crucial if we are trying to maximize our hourly profit. Our decisions are a reflection of how we are feeling at the time we make the decision. If we are upset because we just lost a flip, or some monkey cracked our aces on the bubble, then we are more likely to spew in a spot where if we were thinking correctly we know the right place is fold.

You can't play profitable poker passively (say that 3 times fast). It is impossible to play poker if we are afraid to lose money. We should never play if we can't afford to lose. Things like this will impede our judgement and we will let our emotions control our play. For example, if we are deep in the Sunday Million and we know that shoving any two cards in the small blind is the right play, but if we get knocked out we only will make 10,000$ instead of the 21,000$ that the next place gets. We'll begin to ask ourselves if our play is worth 11,000$ and, most likely, we'll decide to not shove.

Moral of the story: We must always be confident in our decisions.

/rant

Here are my sng results on stars for the last year and also my results on fulltilt beginning just a week ago. I have found a very profitable game, and have been running relatively well, but I think I can continue to profit at close to the same winrate that I have thus far.

SNG Lifetime on stars

Fulltilt graph of this week

Good luck at the tables.

March Update

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my previous blog)

Original post date 3/25/10

Last night I decided I wanted to make Supernova this year. 100,000 fpps on stars - not an easy task. I have 3,000 and 9 months to makes 97,000. So in the next six days, I need to make 1,180 more vpps to make Goldstar. I think if I make Gold this month, next month I will be playing 25 and 50nl, and depending on how many vpp's I get, I will decide if Supernova is attainable.

Here is an update of march so far. My goal is to make $1,000 live and $1,000 online. I cleared my live goal in my first five sessions ($1,040 profit) at Hollywood, with one or two more sessions to go this month:

Online I stopped playing SNGs and starting playing cash with my small roll. My sng and cash results are posted below:

6.50/45's are hard.

Cash has been a little nicer. But unless I run hotter than the sun for the next 6 days, 2k is probably unattainable. But I AM going to make Goldstar and a strat post at the end of this month.

March Goal - $1,000

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my previous blog)

Original post date 3/7/10

This month I started playing the 6.50/45's more regularly and I hope to continue as the month goes on. Once I got over how much I was buying in with (after I loaded all of my tables for the session, usually 20-30 and realizing I was down $150-$200's in buy-ins) I realized the only thing different between the 3's and the 6's are the amount of regs (and first place is a cool $84).

I think the biggest difference besides the regs, is the amount of fold equity you have. If you are playing the 3's and you are shipping atc in the the sb into the bb, you get called by so many weird hands, which causes you to risk most, if not all, of your chips. In the $6.50's, you actually have fold equity. I think its just a psychological thing. Fish in the 3's just see their chips as a 3$ buy in, if they make the final table they will probably win 10-20$. In the 6.50's, fish see that first, second, and third pay $84, $60, $42 respectively. This is enough to keep them from getting pissed and calling your 3rd bvb shove w/ some weird J8 hand and winning the race(normally).

The only other thing you should be doing, is taking very good notes vs the regs. I know that may be hard if you are playing 16+ tables, but when you make the final tables, try to focus on what hands they are doing what with. Just this information alone will tell you how aggressive they are, and that usually will give you a good idea on how they are playing earlier in the tournament from t150(blinds are 75/150) and t400. If you take good notes, one day down the road you will make that K high call bvb, or you will re-steal over their btn minraises.

Anyways, here is the graph for the first week of March. I'm really going to try to hit the 1k mark this month, hopefully I can get in 1,200-1,500 games.

Also, I'd like to play live at least 5-10 times this month. Spring break is this week and I'm sure I can make it down there a few times.

Good luck at the tables

Hugh Hefner and The Doomswitch

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my previous blog)

Original post date 3/1/10

I started playing sng's this month for the first time in about a year, and had pretty decent results at the 3/45's. After the first 200 games I was definitely hoping to hit 1k this month. But after I asked Team Pokerstars Pro, Lee Nelson, if he was Hugh Hefner's twin when he was moved to my table during the stars 1/4 million, Stars turned on my doomswitch.

(an honest question imo)
<-Nelson / Hefner ->

After an almost break even 400 games to finish the month, and receiving silverstar for the first time ever on stars, I was ready to start playing cash again. I started playing the 6/45's last night and from what I noticed, the games are noticeably tighter than the 3/45's. I think people lategame are definitely pushing lighter (definitely noticeable by the reggish players) but they aren't calling as light as they do in the 3's. The games are definitely beatable (maybe for other players, but not while stars has their doomswitch on for me).

I only got to play live a handful of times this month but I had winning sessions all 4 of those times. Not huge nights, but I'm playing much better, more solid, poker.

This month I'm shooting to profit $1000 on stars this month and hopefully do the same playing more live. I have spring break in a week so I plan to put in good volume, both live and online.

Good luck at the tables this month.

Bankroll Management and Basic SNG Strategy

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my previous blog)

originally posted 2/22/2010

This last week has been brutal. After moving up to the 3$ 45mans, I ran well. Very well. Try a 60% ROI over ~200 games. In the first few weeks of February I increased my bankroll about 250%. I knew it was too good to be true, after every session I kept looking at my OPR (www.officialpokerrankings.com) knowing that my 81% ROI was unsustainable. Then It happened In just over 100 games I lost ~70 bi's. I couldn't win anything, it felt like I was losing every flip.

Now you may look at that graph and say, oh he just lost 200$ or about 70 Buy in's, no big deal, etc... I'm not sure how new you are to poker, but 70 BI's is a lot. For cash games people advise you need 20-30 buy in's and while some people, high stakes player Dusty Schmidt aka "Leatherass" who is one of the top online players of all time advises you have at least 100 BI's for cash games.

Crash course:

A buy in means just what it sounds like. It is the amount you buy in for and that is typically 100 big blinds for cash games. So if the limits are .10/.20 cents, the buy in amount for that table is 20$'s, that is the maximum you can buy into that game for. So to be properly rolled for 20 NL you would need at least 400$.

Sit n go's are a completely different game than cash. There is so much more variance involved, especially the bigger sng's you play. The Single Table Tournaments (STT's) have less variance than the 45/90/180 man sng's. What this means is if you play STT's, and you double up once, you will have twice as many chips to play with as the other 7 or 8 people at your table, making it relatively easy for you to just push people around and slide into the money. If you are playing a 45 man tournament (this is what I play), only the top 7 get paid. You have to beat 38 other people to make the money. In doing this, you have to get your money in a lot more than you would in a nine person sng - leading to higher variance.

With all this in mind, I would advise you keep at least a 100 BI rule if you are going to play the sng's. Personally, I feel much more comfortable with 200 BI's and I have a great backer who is very understanding so this works well for us.

If you are just starting out playing sng's I suggest you read as much as you can before you start playing. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/23/mtt-strategy/anthology-2-2-wisdom-mtts-48/ I suggest reading all of those links on that page before you start. It has everything you could want to know about how to play sng's profitably. There are many different ways to approach sng's, so not every strat talked about there is good for everyone. Some people say to be agressive early, and tighten up later and coast into the money. Others advise to play like a complete nit early and loosen up around t100(this is how I play). This is probably the most useful guide on that list. It tells you how to play the 180mans with a description of how you should be playing each level: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=9209807&page=0

Although I don't advise playing the 180mans as you are trying to learn sng's because the variance is sick. It is very easy to play 100's of games without cashing, then win the next 2 for a 100% ROI. If you are just starting out, I suggest playing the 1$ 45mans.

If you need it make a chart of the types of hands you should be playing at each level. Here is what I suggest.

Level 1 10/20 blinds - Level 3 25/50 blinds.
I generally only open JJ+ AK and KQs. I limp most pp's and fold them to raises. I fold all other hands. You are basically looking to setmine with the pp's and if you flop an OP w/ JJ+ or AK, getting it in is completely standard.

Level 4 50/100 - Level 5 75/150
By now we normally have about 9-13 bb's and we start opening our push/folding range. FIRST RULE OF SNG's: If you have less than 10 bb's, you should be either shoving, or folding. Don't get fancy and limp aa trying to trap. Sure you are losing value w/ aa when you shove it for 13 bb's. So obviously you can raise to 2.5 or 3x and pretty much get it in on any flop.

I'm still playing very tight UTG - MP+1. Only shoving 88+ w/ 10bb's or less (sometimes wider when you are down to 5bb). I'm shoving A10s+, AJo+, KQs and 88+.

If it folds to me in the CO and I've got a decent stack relative to the players behind me I'm pretty much shoving AXs, A8o+, K8s+, k10o, 22+, suited connectors, like 89s, 78s. We are trying to steal as much as possible.

Don't be afraid to bust here. Sure sometimes the BB will wake up with ak or jj and we will be dominated. But this is only about 10% of his range, so if we do this 10 times, and he folds 9 of them, we are making profitable decisions. Remember this.

Levels 6 and on.
Now we are normally close to the final two tables and we either have a huge chipstack, and we should be shoving pretty much any two cards (atc) on the button if it folds to us and we have shorter stacks behind us. Obviously we want to be stealing as much as possible, and we know they are only calling us with a very small % of their hands (aka range). And even if we do get called, we are normally not less than a 30% favorite so we have plenty of cards to help us suck out.

I pretty much have the same ranges as the previous levels, but I do open up earlier, shoving all pp's utg w/ 7-11 bb's etc.

Also as the deepstack, we want to put pressure on the other players, especially the shorter stacks. If we are on the button for example, and the CO limps in and the blinds are 800/1600, and we have ajs, obviously we are shoving. When the CO limps he rarely has AQ+ or JJ+, everything else we are flipping with at the worst. All of his ax hands we have dominated, not to mention his kj, k10, k9, qj, q10, q9 etc... So we know shoving is the right play. But what if we have 77 and he limps? I would shove 100% of the time. Even if we have k10, or any of the hands I just listed. The odds of him limp/calling a hand that DOMINATES us are so slim, shoving is the best play. If he calls we are normally no less than a 40% favorite, and we have something going for us that he doesn't have - fold equity.

Fold equity means the equity our percieved hand has vs his perceived range against us. That makes no sense. Basically what is happening is, he see's his hand, and thinks to himself. "Oh I like it, lets see a flop." He isn't thinking about how bad limping for 1/6 of his stack is. He just wants to see a flop. 90% of players are like this - they are awful. So he limps and the next player folds, it gets to us, and we have him covered. We go all in and it folds around back to him. He right then has to make a decision for all of his chips, is his hand better than what we are representing? Probably not. He decides that his q9o isn't good and he mucks and we pick up 3 or so bb's and move on to the next hand. What we created by shoving was fold equity. His hand might have been better than our 78s, but when we shove, we are representing a bigger hand than what he is holding, so he decides to fold.

Remember: Don't worry about busting. Our goal is to steal, steal, steal. Every now and then we will get aa and double up and it will be smooth sailing the rest of the way.

I will post a final table strat next week, but with this post and the few links I posted, I'm sure that you will be crushing sng's in no time.

Luckbox

Moved to Donkaments

-OMG its LUCKBOX

(taken from my old blog)

Long story short, I ran very bad playing cash games on Fulltilt for an extended period of time. Probably because I stopped spending time investing in my game (watching videos, reviewing HH's) and sticking with a style that I know knew was profitable. The hard thing about poker is you can play exactly right, and lose money. Poker isn't fair. So even when we are making the right plays and we are just getting unlucky, getting coolered, losing flips etc the first tendency is to change up our style and second guess ourselves.

This is wrong.

What we should be focusing on is sticking to our game plan that we know works. Take Tiger Woods for example, when he was younger and on tour, he was killing it. He went through a tough streak where he had trouble putting things together and scoring well. Even through these times he wasn't playing bad golf. He just couldn't get anything going. Did he completely change his swing or his mentality towards the game? I don't think so. Sure he tweaked it a little with tips from his amazing coach, but he didn't start swinging left handed. He spent a good majority of his time PRACTICING, not PLAYING. Needless to say he started scoring better eventually and after his long 'downswing' he was better than ever imo.

I think what we can learn from this is if you start running bad (it will happen to you I promise), we should be putting in more time practicing (reviewing hands, posting hands, watching vids, just opening random tables and trying to read hands/pick up on mistakes, ect). I personally thought that the best thing to do when you were running bad was to just grind through it. Now I don't think its horrible but we should still be aware that we have probably developed a leak or two.

So after running bad, I decided to start playing sng's again. I had success with them in the past and I was getting burned out of playing cash games. I found an amazing backer who wanted to move me up the 45man levels. We agreed to start at the 1$ 45mans for a few hundred games, then assuming I'd profit, move me to the 3's and eventually to the 6's. I played awful the first 100 or so games, not remember what to do in certain situations. After the first sweat session we did my graph took a positive turn. I quickly moved up to the 3's and ran very well for about 250 games. With almost a 60% ROI (I knew was impossible to maintain - but it was nice picking up 130 buy in's that week). Yesterday I played ~60 sng's and cashed in 3 of them. It felt like I was losing every flip, I was getting coolered like crazy in the sb, nothing was going my way. I guess after 7 straight winning sessions it was going to happen eventually. After a rough night last night, I'm refreshed and ready to play some more with a better mindset. I'm going to play how I know what I'm doing, with confidence, picking good spots, etc.

Here's my sng graph on stars, I will be sure to post more sometime later this week.