Happy to say this.
Flatline league. Three weeks, three tournaments, three cashes.
Including a first place finish last week.
Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing all that different - save for one piece of advice I took to heart over a month ago from a player I greatly respect.
"Chris, you've got to have patience."
Sounds simple. Some would probably say - simply stupid. I'd say my rediscovery of the most important trait of a poker player has improved my tournament game immensely.
Of course variance has helped as well - especially last Monday where I found myself all in bad a few times (and crushed one time) and managed to be on the right side of a suckout or two. Or three. Or seven.
To be fair, I also got in ahead many more times and got rivered, or runner runnered, and even flushed away - though managed to still have enough chips to crawl back.
Last Monday's first place finish was especially dramatic. With a starting stack of 5000 whittled down to less than 1100 (thanks to a terrible call by an opponent who naturally turned his middling flush draw) I somehow released my despair into the ether; and bit by bit, little by little, built my stack back up.
Tight. But VERY aggressive. Again and again, I used my MAXIMUM fold equity. While other players, including one or two whom I love dearly as friends, continue to bet out a quarter or even a third of their stack (in the vain hope of somehow getting away from a hand) pre-flop. I simply pushed all in - with expertly timed, SELECTIVE aggression.
Sometimes I had a premium hand. Sometimes I was stealing with marginal cards. Sometimes I had trash. No one at the table was able to distinguish which hand was which.
And then I ran into cards. JJ All-in. No callers. AA. All-in. No callers. AK. All-in. Called by A6. Sweet.
By being almost hyper-aggressive when I did have good cards early on, I was able to maintain this tone - and get paid when people woke up with slightly better than marginal holdings.
I love that people think I'm maniacal, when in reality I've tightened my game considerably.
Here's hoping they've stopped reading this.
If this isn't the case, I do have to mention one thing, and give credit where credit is due to ProfGrif who managed to outplay me heads up after sucking out on me about mid-way through our battle.
I was indeed tilted, and only by the grace of the poker Gods was I able to put a brutal runner-runner straight on him and then put him away by getting lucky. You had me sir - next time I hope I play better in the end, and if you outplay me again, I hope you take it down.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Flatline League 2009
"Flatline" is my online poker league. A group of friends who gather every Monday night at 930 to play a rake-free two, or sometimes three, table tournament of No Limit Hold-em on the virtual felt.
This is our third year. The first year - I basically crushed the league. The second year - not so much. So far this time around, we've had two tournaments; I've cashed in both. Finishing second last week and fourth this week.
I feel much better about my chances to turn a profit this time around; I really think my newfound patience, combined with staying aggressive at the right times, will help me avoid a disastrous run like I had just a couple of months ago.
The very best thing about the league, is that out of 20 or so regulars, there are only a handful of half decent players among them, and not one in the bunch that I would consider better than me by any serious degree.
This should quite simply = profit. If, and this is a big if, I stay patient and focused. More to come.
This is our third year. The first year - I basically crushed the league. The second year - not so much. So far this time around, we've had two tournaments; I've cashed in both. Finishing second last week and fourth this week.
I feel much better about my chances to turn a profit this time around; I really think my newfound patience, combined with staying aggressive at the right times, will help me avoid a disastrous run like I had just a couple of months ago.
The very best thing about the league, is that out of 20 or so regulars, there are only a handful of half decent players among them, and not one in the bunch that I would consider better than me by any serious degree.
This should quite simply = profit. If, and this is a big if, I stay patient and focused. More to come.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Oh my...
Well they say good things come in threes - or is that celebrity deaths? Anyway, I hit my third big tournament cash in under two months, and this time it was online.
Full Tilt has a Sunday tournament called the 100K Double Deuce. It's a $20 + $2 entry fee with a guaranteed prize pool of $100,000. The entry fee is way above my microscopic bankroll (currently at about $40 total) so once a week I have been entering a .60 satellite to gain entry.
I won a seat two weeks ago and was unable to play as I had a date with my little girl at the aquarium. So I tried again the next day, plunking down another whopping 60 cents (it actually is whopping when your roll is only 40 bucks) and promptly winning a seat for the following Sunday.
This time my schedule remained open, so I was able to log on and sit down with 9001 other players, including 13 Full Tilt "Red" pros. Professional poker players who are either fully or partially sponsored by the site. Incidentally, I outlasted them all, including WSOP bracelet winners Scott Fischman and Lee Watkinson.
In keeping with my strategy of monk-like patience sprinkled with the occasional burst of selective aggression, I managed to hang on for over seven hours - finally finishing in 42nd place and collecting $360 for my efforts.
Wow.
In dollar amount, this was not my biggest cash (that would be the $2330 I pocketed in December at Hollywood Park) but it was by FAR the biggest return on my investment. To get $360 for .60 cents, the mind truly boggles.
Incidentally, the hands I saw and took place in, were a roller coaster of suck-outs and monsters. A very large (probably over twice, perhaps three times, the number of hands that would have occurred in a live session) smorgasbord of poker. Some typically horrible online poker players, and surprisingly some very good players. So good in fact, that for the first time in a MTT, either live or online, I really had moments where I felt completely outclassed by a couple of my table-mates. Sobering, yes, but also refreshing in a way. This game still has so much for me to unlock.
Most notable hands - I had my aces cracked, twice. I was at-risk and basically crushed with my AQ up against AK with an ace on board. I caught runner runner for a broadway straight. But for that one exception, I always managed to get all my money in good or at least in a race. My final hand of the night was of the latter category, my KQ suited push got looked up by a small pocket pair and failed to improve. I was not thrilled with this play on my part, but it was acceptable. It was technically a race, with me on the slightly underdog side of the equation.
As I mentioned, I used selective aggression - most of the time small balling my way to taking down pots about every other orbit or so if I wasn't catching cards. I would make a standard raise, and follow it up with a c-bet of about 2/3 the pot even if I didn't connect. It worked often enough for me to keep accumulating chips.
A few times, I found myself getting short stacked, and I had to abandon the small-ball approach - taking a deep breath, closing my eyes and shoving all my chips in. I almost always tried to make my move without junk - almost. A couple of times, the blinds were approaching and the time (meaning my targets) were just right so I went all-in with trash. Thanks to my reads and a bit of luck, I managed to take down those pots without showdowns.
A couple of times when I had better starting cards (suited connecters, small pairs) I did get called. Two of these incidents stick out in my memory. Once with AJ and another time with pocket tens. Both times, thankfully, my hands won the day, flopping two pair with my AJ and trips with my tens.
Despite my apparently relentless success in large MTT's of late, I'm still very much aware, that one has to get lucky multiple times to go deep in these things.
And so there it is. As of January 12, in less than four months, I have built an online bankroll from 0 dollars, to just over $407.
I've contemplated withdrawing most of it, but instead have decided for now to 'let it ride' so to speak, and see if I can grow my roll even more. Sticking with Chris Ferguson's bankroll guidelines, I plan to step up a little bit in stakes with Sit-N-Go's, where hopefully I can fare a little better than I did against the devastating rake and unequivocally retarded players of the $1.25 level.
As for MTT's, I don't think I'll play that much more expensive events than I have - I love the concept of spending very little and winning very big. I don't know that I'll ever beat my mark of turning .60c into $360! But I would love to try!
Full Tilt has a Sunday tournament called the 100K Double Deuce. It's a $20 + $2 entry fee with a guaranteed prize pool of $100,000. The entry fee is way above my microscopic bankroll (currently at about $40 total) so once a week I have been entering a .60 satellite to gain entry.
I won a seat two weeks ago and was unable to play as I had a date with my little girl at the aquarium. So I tried again the next day, plunking down another whopping 60 cents (it actually is whopping when your roll is only 40 bucks) and promptly winning a seat for the following Sunday.
This time my schedule remained open, so I was able to log on and sit down with 9001 other players, including 13 Full Tilt "Red" pros. Professional poker players who are either fully or partially sponsored by the site. Incidentally, I outlasted them all, including WSOP bracelet winners Scott Fischman and Lee Watkinson.
In keeping with my strategy of monk-like patience sprinkled with the occasional burst of selective aggression, I managed to hang on for over seven hours - finally finishing in 42nd place and collecting $360 for my efforts.
Wow.
In dollar amount, this was not my biggest cash (that would be the $2330 I pocketed in December at Hollywood Park) but it was by FAR the biggest return on my investment. To get $360 for .60 cents, the mind truly boggles.
Incidentally, the hands I saw and took place in, were a roller coaster of suck-outs and monsters. A very large (probably over twice, perhaps three times, the number of hands that would have occurred in a live session) smorgasbord of poker. Some typically horrible online poker players, and surprisingly some very good players. So good in fact, that for the first time in a MTT, either live or online, I really had moments where I felt completely outclassed by a couple of my table-mates. Sobering, yes, but also refreshing in a way. This game still has so much for me to unlock.
Most notable hands - I had my aces cracked, twice. I was at-risk and basically crushed with my AQ up against AK with an ace on board. I caught runner runner for a broadway straight. But for that one exception, I always managed to get all my money in good or at least in a race. My final hand of the night was of the latter category, my KQ suited push got looked up by a small pocket pair and failed to improve. I was not thrilled with this play on my part, but it was acceptable. It was technically a race, with me on the slightly underdog side of the equation.
As I mentioned, I used selective aggression - most of the time small balling my way to taking down pots about every other orbit or so if I wasn't catching cards. I would make a standard raise, and follow it up with a c-bet of about 2/3 the pot even if I didn't connect. It worked often enough for me to keep accumulating chips.
A few times, I found myself getting short stacked, and I had to abandon the small-ball approach - taking a deep breath, closing my eyes and shoving all my chips in. I almost always tried to make my move without junk - almost. A couple of times, the blinds were approaching and the time (meaning my targets) were just right so I went all-in with trash. Thanks to my reads and a bit of luck, I managed to take down those pots without showdowns.
A couple of times when I had better starting cards (suited connecters, small pairs) I did get called. Two of these incidents stick out in my memory. Once with AJ and another time with pocket tens. Both times, thankfully, my hands won the day, flopping two pair with my AJ and trips with my tens.
Despite my apparently relentless success in large MTT's of late, I'm still very much aware, that one has to get lucky multiple times to go deep in these things.
And so there it is. As of January 12, in less than four months, I have built an online bankroll from 0 dollars, to just over $407.
I've contemplated withdrawing most of it, but instead have decided for now to 'let it ride' so to speak, and see if I can grow my roll even more. Sticking with Chris Ferguson's bankroll guidelines, I plan to step up a little bit in stakes with Sit-N-Go's, where hopefully I can fare a little better than I did against the devastating rake and unequivocally retarded players of the $1.25 level.
As for MTT's, I don't think I'll play that much more expensive events than I have - I love the concept of spending very little and winning very big. I don't know that I'll ever beat my mark of turning .60c into $360! But I would love to try!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Good News Bad News
Mostly good news actually.
I outlasted over 500 players last night at HPC's Poker Derby tournament Event #1, a deep stack NLHE $125 freeze out. I finished 17th.
That's the good news.
The bad news - I only pocketed $490 total for my ten hours of work and walked out of the casino at 5 in the morning. And although it was a non-smoking room, people were cheating in the hallways because it was so cold outside, so my eyes and lungs burned throughout the event.
I did have fun, but talk about a grind. I said aloud when I sat down, after glancing at the structure and seeing how many players there were, "This will last till 7 in the morning." The table mate to my right (who it turned out would bust me over 10 hours later) said something to the effect of "Oh no, this will be shorter than that. Fast structure here."
Wrong. I nailed it - I knew what had to be done to go deep. And I almost made it just right, I just didn't get lucky at the end when everyone was virtually short stacked anyway. The real money was in the top 6 players. That would have been sweet.
Still, it was nice to more than double my money I guess - there were plenty of others who played for over 9 hours and made 30% on their investment or less - and even those who played for 8 hours and made nothing.
And don't think that this is a regular thing for me now. I had planned for almost two months to play in this event; the other tournament I played on 12/21 was an impulsive getaway. Sven and I had been talking about going to this event together for awhile and it was kind of fun to make it happen. Though he felt the same way about the smoke and the grind - he busted at about 100th place, and was one of those who had invested cash and substantial time only to walk away with just smelly clothes and burned lungs.
I love live poker, but I won't be doing one of those again. I'll be sticking to the 10K guarantee on Sunday at 1130 in the morning. HPC's regular tourneys are in a much less ghetto and much less smokey area of the casino. If I do ever another deepstack in the smoke room (I did in fact love that the structure favored skill, plus there was a chance to win real money for a low buy-in) it will have to start in the morning.
Not much to say about my play - except super tight with an occasional move thrown in seemed to work out pretty well. I got paid with my monsters, especially when I was deceptive (limping with Aces, etc.) and I did manage to c-bet successfully on a number of occasions despite my lack of connection with the flop.
I feel good about my game and play, but I know I still have lots to learn. What I don't want to be is what the majority of players are when they get a big stack - aggressive without selection. Time after time I saw a big stack sit down, and then splash around without a plan of escape or even worse, without an aggressive follow through.
I had a big stack through the last third of the tournament, and I basically folded my way to the second table, before once again I was eaten alive by the monster blinds. Not great, but so much better than imploding with A7 suited the way a lady with a mountain of chips did, tangling with the only other big stack at our table who woke up with kings. And then she got mad at the dealer. Classless and just plain stupid.
Not for me. My goal is that when I get the stack, to EFFECTIVELY bully with SELECTIVE aggression. There were a couple of guys who had it right, and accumulated rather than spewed their chips. Someday, I'll get there. For now, I'm just having a blast.
I outlasted over 500 players last night at HPC's Poker Derby tournament Event #1, a deep stack NLHE $125 freeze out. I finished 17th.
That's the good news.
The bad news - I only pocketed $490 total for my ten hours of work and walked out of the casino at 5 in the morning. And although it was a non-smoking room, people were cheating in the hallways because it was so cold outside, so my eyes and lungs burned throughout the event.
I did have fun, but talk about a grind. I said aloud when I sat down, after glancing at the structure and seeing how many players there were, "This will last till 7 in the morning." The table mate to my right (who it turned out would bust me over 10 hours later) said something to the effect of "Oh no, this will be shorter than that. Fast structure here."
Wrong. I nailed it - I knew what had to be done to go deep. And I almost made it just right, I just didn't get lucky at the end when everyone was virtually short stacked anyway. The real money was in the top 6 players. That would have been sweet.
Still, it was nice to more than double my money I guess - there were plenty of others who played for over 9 hours and made 30% on their investment or less - and even those who played for 8 hours and made nothing.
And don't think that this is a regular thing for me now. I had planned for almost two months to play in this event; the other tournament I played on 12/21 was an impulsive getaway. Sven and I had been talking about going to this event together for awhile and it was kind of fun to make it happen. Though he felt the same way about the smoke and the grind - he busted at about 100th place, and was one of those who had invested cash and substantial time only to walk away with just smelly clothes and burned lungs.
I love live poker, but I won't be doing one of those again. I'll be sticking to the 10K guarantee on Sunday at 1130 in the morning. HPC's regular tourneys are in a much less ghetto and much less smokey area of the casino. If I do ever another deepstack in the smoke room (I did in fact love that the structure favored skill, plus there was a chance to win real money for a low buy-in) it will have to start in the morning.
Not much to say about my play - except super tight with an occasional move thrown in seemed to work out pretty well. I got paid with my monsters, especially when I was deceptive (limping with Aces, etc.) and I did manage to c-bet successfully on a number of occasions despite my lack of connection with the flop.
I feel good about my game and play, but I know I still have lots to learn. What I don't want to be is what the majority of players are when they get a big stack - aggressive without selection. Time after time I saw a big stack sit down, and then splash around without a plan of escape or even worse, without an aggressive follow through.
I had a big stack through the last third of the tournament, and I basically folded my way to the second table, before once again I was eaten alive by the monster blinds. Not great, but so much better than imploding with A7 suited the way a lady with a mountain of chips did, tangling with the only other big stack at our table who woke up with kings. And then she got mad at the dealer. Classless and just plain stupid.
Not for me. My goal is that when I get the stack, to EFFECTIVELY bully with SELECTIVE aggression. There were a couple of guys who had it right, and accumulated rather than spewed their chips. Someday, I'll get there. For now, I'm just having a blast.
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