Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – June 21, 2010

June 21, 2010

I think the 'better' indicator is my attitude.  Today like I said I lost $1k.  Pretty brutal... I never ONCE yelled, cussed, hit anything etc.  I said a lot of "Wow... Damn this seat sucks... Well at least I didn't shove"  and that type.  There were two or three hands I felt like an idiot after, but for the most part I KNEW i was just having some really shitty luck, it wasn't a hand I thought I would look back at and be upset about my play in.

Tho I am still human and still obviously prone to tilt, I truly think I'm doing much better at getting mad only when I play bad and not when I am just a victim of variance.

And about the whole "my ev was up" thing, yeah you're right.. I know for example, 1 - 2 weeks ago I made $1k in only 3 hours and my EV was somewhere around +850.  I was excited and happy, BUT I knew full well that even though my EV was so high, I hit a lot of draws, didn't remember my QQ+ running into ANY sets and when the scare cards hit on the river, they didn't have it... So on the surface it might have just looked like "Hey best hand won"  I was just getting spoiled, my "best hand' ALWAYS won, and THAT in a way is sucking out as well.

I think you just have to get a general feeling if you are seeing your opponents make mistakes that you don't think you would do if the cards and positions were switched, or if you see them just getting unlucky losing with AQ to your AA on a AQ3 board and that kind of thing that you would have lost to as well in their shoes.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – June 19, 2010

June 19, 2010

Started trying fullstacking the last 2 days... And by fullstacking I guess I really mean 50bbs  Im at the 20 - 50bb tables.

Anyway I've had 3 sessions, first 2 were 15 tabling, 3rd was 18 tabling.   All 3 have been +EV sessions though I didn't always win, so far I think I'm really liking it, I've definitely been in a couple tough spots, but I think I'm working it out pretty well for being so newish at it.

The last 2 days have only been 10,500 hands, less than 1 normal full day despite it being 10 hours of actual play, I looked at it today and after a bad start with the normal short stacking I improved my EV to +$116 over that time but my money is -$886  so almost EXACTLY $1,000 below EV... Oh well I've ran good and bad, if the EV is positive I can't be mad at it, I'm at 475,000 vpps right now, I COULD make a push to get 500k before I leave for my vacation but because of my family being here I probably will just keep doing these shorter 5ish hour sessions before I leave and be around probably 490 when I leave so right there.  Anyway hope it keeps going good and hopefully its not just good variance, I actually felt i was getting screwed on the last session, I had 3 hands in a row with total fish 55/20   24/18 type players that had:  K6 vs my KJ board of K96J  and they JUST called to the river not one raise
55 vs K8 board of K85  JUST called to the river never raised    and then KK vs. 55 board of something like 59JKQ so he JUST called to the river as well and didn't ever put in a raise with a set, and unfortunately I got stacked set over set the other way and had 2 KK vs. AA aipfs  but even still, positive EV felt pretty good.

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – May 27, 2010

May 27,2010

Well the last two days have been pretty frustrating, yesterday I was down big early on but grinded out to back to even but then the last 2 hours every time I would get even or up about $40 I would  hit a down swing, when my time was up I actually hit a 5 hour peak LOW by diving at the last 20 minutes and losing $350 on the day.

Today is only half over but even more frustrating.  I played a 2 hour session this morning, was up almost $300 in about 10 minutes then gave most of it back but was $50.  I came back and INSTANTLY started getting screwed.  Losing every race, running QQ, KK and AK into AA like crazy, and then after about 40 minutes, it REALLY got bad.  I lost $430 in only 8 minutes, as my opponents just insanely out flopped me or got allin pf with me and sucked out.

On the 2/4 tables I had the 3 following hands all-in PF:  AKs vs JTs,  KK vs JTs,  AK vs T8s  all 3 losing even after 2 of them flopping a set and top pair but them finishing with the nut  straight.

Then there were several where I had KK or AA against one player, they had T5s or 82s and flopped a pair and flush draw, it was just insane what I kept running into.

Next thing I knew I was down over $800.

It's just very maddening, I guess if I had NO ego I wouldn't care, I know I'm not just being an idiot and getting trapped and paying people off light, its just really bad luck, but when it happens a lot and ESPECIALLY when they hit some crazy draw or trips and THEN we get all-in, it makes me sick cuz I know my EV looks terrible.  Technically this shouldn't matter to me, but I'm human and it does... Of course I am only 800 vpps away from clearing my bonus, I THOUGHT i was going to clear it all without TOO many bad runs, but today looks like it could easily be a -1 -2k day.

Hopefully it will turn soon, but my gawd this has been a ridiculous day.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – May 19, 2010

May 19, 2010

I haven't been updating as much as again there hasn't been a lot to report.  I've been bouncing back and forth between playing more 100nl and then get sick of the points and move back up.

Lately I decided that 400nl is just TOO swingy, I don't need that stress.  So the last two days I decided to start out playing 100nl  and then finish the day at 200nl as in the mornings vpps suck and play is too tight there's too many regs.

So far the results have been good, I'm up over 1k in the last 2 days and my EV is up over about 800.
I still feel that over time this whole change will be better for me as I'm now forced to not rathole, but of course there is a learning curve.  Well today I'm pretty sure I just had good luck coupled with my good play, but I definitely made a few bigger lay downs that I normally wouldn't have and that adds up.. A few $100+ drawing to 2 outs or less add up over the course of a 13,000 hand session.

I'm now over 390,000 vpps, I definitely fell back a bit trying more 100nl and playing less tables trying to get my game better, but as I said before, I know just how easy it is to catch up and I"m not worried about it at all, Especially when 400nl is usually around .6 - .8 vpps/ hand it's insane.

So this month has been pretty good, I've had some huge downswings but I'm feeling GREAT about my play right now and hopefully I keep improving.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Barney Frank’s Online Gambling Bill Goes to Markup Tuesday

Tuesday July 27th, 2010

This is legitimate movement in the direction of officially legal online poker.  Even though other bills including the notorious UIGEA which was installed as a Trojan Horse aboard the SAFE Port Act never made it illegal for an individual poker player to play on online poker sites it still has had a chilling effect on online poker players especially in the United States.

Other steps will have to be made before this bill becomes a law and these steps probably won’t happen until next year.  According to John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, the bill almost certainly has support to pass or Mr. Frank wouldn’t be calling it to a vote.

We all look forward to the day when we can pull the noble game of poker out of the shadows and into full legalization and play poker hands online knowing we are participating in a fully regulated and legal endeavor.

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – April 15, 2010

April 15, 2010

Ok made 300k within my first hour of today, I put in a little extra time and made back up to my monthly goal of being at 305,000 by nights end.  It was pretty cool because it also coincided almost to the VERY FPP of me hitting enough FPPs to buy another 4k bonus.  Whenever my 4k bonus is within a day or 2 of hitting a hundred thousand milestone I hold off a few days getting the milestone so i can buy the bonus earlier and clear it while getting vpps for the next bonus... In the long run it doesn't matter but I hate waiting so long for the bonuses to clear and I guess just getting 50,000 fpps to get the milestone will break up the wait.

Anyway as far as this new change is concerned:

Yesterday the VPPs were amazing, today they were back to normal or maybe even a little bit worse, not much but a TINY bit worse, I think perhaps more regs were trying out these games and tightening up the tables, I dunno.

But what I have tentatively decided to do is short stack but not rathole.  I've been looking for an excuse to try bigger stacks for a while now, and the fact that the timer is set at 60 minutes and there are FAR fewer tables is probably that push.  Today during peak time we had around 50 20-50bb tables from 1-2 & 2-4 so that was cool.  Obviously though I'm not that good at larger stacks yet.  I feel like there are a LOT of people on the tables that aren't that great either, but I REALLY have to work on my curiosity.  So often I'll have Aces and get raised on the turn and pretty much know I'm beat but still call just so I can see how this jackass sucked out on me.. and then after I see I say oh ok that way... hmm.. that wasn't worth the cost of the info... who's the jackass now?

I don't do it all the time or anything, TPTK type hands I get away from when I feel I need to mostly but those over pairs get me because sometimes I will think I should fold and then I call and Oh ok He just has AJ on the JT84 board and my Queens are good, so then when I get in another spot where I feel I'm beat I'll say, maybe he just has TPTK again.. and end up losing big stacks.  I definitely need to improve my full stacking game and who knows maybe this will be a good spot since a LOT of hands are against shorter stacks anyway even when I do get over 100bbs at the table most times it is a range of 20 - 60bb stacks, of course if I do have a larger stack and a lot of others do or a few regs do that I think are good or probably better than me I'll leave though because I'm just not that comfortable with it yet.

For now though it seems to be OK.  Tonight I was playing a bit later than usual and was pretty damn low on tables, I think I ended up doing something like 18 - 200nl  3  400nl  and 3 100nl tables at the end as tables were drying up, but I usually dont quite play that late, obviously I hope there will be a bit more than that to choose from, but for now it seems I have a plan that will work out alright.

I ended the day after playing almost 9 hours down $260 in EV, of course part of that was getting over $100 all-in on the turn after a guy hit his gutshot against my aces and was drawing dead so only a few buyins down ev (actual was close to -500 i ALWAYS run bad at 400NL   )  but yeah hopefully I will keep getting better and start getting away from dangerous hands more often and letting the bad players stack off when I have a better hand more often... at least I THINK that's what my mind set should be when I get a larger stack against other large stacks at FR. Obviously breaking the habit and luxury of seeing lots of showdowns and quenching your curiosity when short stacking is hard to appease now that I've been doing it so long

But I digress... Over 300k!

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 -- March 29, 2010

March 29, 2010

So yesterday I started out my sessions trying to play like I did before with a bit of mixed results though definitely better than it had been, but of course this was only one day and about 6.5 hours.

The main thing was I realized for the last 300,000 hands I've been playing around a 11.5/11 style, whereas before I was 14/14  I looked and mainly the difference was just from not stealing as often, somehow I had convinced myself my steals weren't working as much and neither were my flop cbets... when they don't work 4 or 5 times in a row, which is like 4 or 5 times in about 20 seconds playing 24tables it feels like you're spewing chips, but I filtered out when I stole and found that even though it wasn't working quite as often as before, it was still a HUGE money maker, I looked at Saturdays terrible session in particular, my ev for Saturday was something like -$380 yet I lost over $1,000.  So I ran bad and played bad, but even with this bad run, when stealing from the CO and Button I still made $1.79 per attempt, so almost 90bb/100 or so at 1/2.  So then I multiplied my old steal % by the amount of times I could have stolen, and it worked out that during my sessions on Saturday I could have stolen around 180 more times or so, so roughly $325 worth of value if my winrate held up that I just let slip away.  That's quite a bit of money just given away...

Years ago when I did the 1/2 limit grind I started out making about 100 - 200/day for the first week, then slowly started losing more and more and more and I kept playing tighter and tighter thinking that was why I was losing cause they were so loose i needed to play tighter or something.  Well I guess I was slipping into that funk again.

I played again yesterday, after 2 sessions my EV was +300ish and then played one last 2 hour session and my ev was -380.  So after 6 hours -80ev.  Not great, but it was at a 15/14.5 style and honestly I think the last session was just DOMINATED by coolers, I felt I took a TON of them, and usually on most sessions my W$atSD is right around 50% .  Like 52% is decent, 50% is usually a little bad and anything below is usually when I'm getting coolered a lot.

Well just to give an example, I actually won like $50 during my lat session where my ev was -$380  So I ran great right?  Well even with THAT my W$atSD was LESS than 40% that's one of my lowest of all time AND I ran 10 buyins above ev!!

So I'm really feeling pretty encouraged by the original results I really think I was just somehow focusing more on when people would resteal or raise my flop cbet several times in a row instead of looking at the overall results and seeing my cbets were only working about 1.5% less and my steals only about 1% less overall, not NEARLY enough to stop doing them so often imo.

Obviously I don't want to get premature about this, poker is insanely swingy and maybe I was playing against a lot of weaker players since it was Sunday, and also the regs probably see my steal % as lower on their HUD than what I was doing yesterday so overtime that will start to change and they should start fighting back more often too, but for now I'm at least cautiously encouraged about the results and will hopefully keep them going in the right direction even  more.

260,000 VPPs and climbing

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – March 27, 2010

Uhm, I'm not sure.  There are 52 weeks in a year, I'm trying to do it in a minimum of 50 weeks, so 20,000/week.

This year started on a Fri so Fri - Thursday is a week.  This Thursday will be the end of week 13.

So by Thursday I need 260,000.  I have 256,000 now, so one more full day and I'll have over 260k.  I may get as high as 275,000 but I'm not sure.

I've been really running bad lately and just having TERRIBLE luck and not playing well either.
Today I'm at -$270 EV which is about 7 buyins for me, not TOO bad but obviously not ideal, but I'm down $1060 today.

Also even before today started, in the last week since I purchased my $4,000 bonus and started clearing it I was already down over $1,000 below what my EV said i should be at.

I'm still above my EV reading overall for the entire year, but since this last week or two has just been so bad it's really all hitting at once and making it hard on my psyche

Actually even yesterday, I won something like $40 after almost 9 hours, but it sucked because with only 40 minutes til I stopped playing I was up $600, then suddenly lost every single hand and finished almost break even.  This game can sure be a struggle.

I'm fine on money though so there is still no reason to REALLY fret I guess, I'm still doing ok and will keep going, I just need to figure out what has been going on with my EV plummet.  I have made some kind of unconscious changes I guess, and I'm going to hopefully flush them out.  If my EV were still going up and I was losing I wouldn't mind really at all, but these days like today where I lose a ton and my EV is down $250+ really make me upset mentally and start doubting everything (which probably I should)

It's really MUCH harder to track things in poker than I ever realized though, it's not just about your EV being up or down, maybe you put lots of coolers on people and had none put on yourself?  Maybe you flopped a lot better than you had before, maybe your opponents kept missing the boards so your cbets succeeded more often?  There are just SO SOOOO many factors into running good or bad it's really almost impossible to know.

Hopefully I can make some sense of this though without changing anything that will make me do worse.

Gl!

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

The WSOP 2010 Final Table

So here’s what the final table looks like:

Player Name	Chip Count
Jonathan Duhamel	65,975,000
John Dolan	46,250,000
Joseph Cheong	23,525,000
John Racener	19,050,000
Matthew Jarvis	16,700,000
Filippo Candio	16,400,000
Michael Mizrachi	14,450,000
Soi Nguyen	9,650,000
Jason Senti	7,625,000

I’m happy to report that my hoping for Michael Mizrachi to win hasn’t killed his chances so far.  The final 9 will play to a winner in November, 2010.

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – February 19, 2010

I had a really bad week, did a short coaching session and think that although at first it was probably a little bit more bad luck than anything I went a little on tilt without knowing it, doing stupid things post flop where I had hands like JJ or QQ and flop comes K84 and then when some new player donks into me I kept not believing them and shoving or reraising and was almost always proved that they had it, just a few stupid post flop leaks I didn't even realize I was doing, I think it can be easier than I realized to get in a rut and start playing dumb with 24 tables going, its good to look over my sessions here and there cause it can be a real eye opener later on, you know you're playing bad when you see several hands where you are embarrassed and think, what the fuck was i thinking there?

Anyway I also played about 2.5 hours of full stacking at 100NL FR today.  It went pretty good, I felt pretty comfortable early on, I was a bit confused what to do in spots where I had say JJ, big stack opens, small stack 3 bet shoves, do I call, do I 4 bet and get practically have my stack in, do I shove?  those spots were a little shaky for me but I managed to do alright.

Overall I finished -80 so not quite a buyin and I'm pretty happy with that since I had a few coolers where I flopped sets and they flopped the straight (twice) and once where I flopped a set of 3's in the BB and bet pot to the river where I eased off a little and a guy min reraised me with 77 that rivered a set even though there were  2 or 3 over cards on the board, oh well.  Definitely felt more comfortable than I expected, I'm going to probably try a few more of these sessions while in California and hopefully keep getting better at it.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Poker Table Ratings Uncovers Cereus Flaw and Then Makes Everyone Misunderstand What it Means

Ok, I’m out of the loop so I missed this issue that was bought up in May and then which circled sites like wildfire.  UltimateBet and Absolute Poker were using a simple custom encoding instead of industry standard SSL encryption (the kind your browser uses where you are visiting https:// sites like a bank, etc.)  The flaw is definitely something that should have been fixed (and was fixed a few weeks ago) but the explanation given by Poker Table Ratings (their article here) gave the impression that the flaw could easily allow an attacker to compromise your account, see your hole cards, etc.

Well… Yes.  IF you are playing UltimateBet on an unsecured and unencrypted wireless connection AND someone has a computer with a special wireless card that lets them sniff packets AND if they figured out the encoding they could see information sent from you to the cardroom (like your username and password) and from the cardroom to you (like your hole cards) AND they are sitting right next to you.

One minor issue—who plays poker (or does anything financial at all) on an unsecured unencrypted wireless connection?  ALMOST NO ONE.  Most online players, I’d dare say, play poker either from a single computer, or from a home wired network or from an encrypted home wireless network.  And instead of acknowledging that this is basically safe they say even wired networks could be compromised which goes beyond silly because it means that someone has to target YOU and then get a wired connection to your wired network which means plugging an RJ 45 into your switch/router/whatever which is probably right there sitting next to you and THEN they have to have a special network card that allows packet sniffing, the software to use that card and the ability to crack the encoding, and then somehow use that while you are playing online poker.  So… yes if your sister is a master computer hacker and lives with you there could have been an issue.  For everyone else in the world there’s NO way your account, hole cards, etc are going to be compromised.

Question:  If someone knows about this bug and sees my account playing poker can they hack me and see my hole cards?

Answer: Not unless they know who you are in real life and break the physical security at your actual physical network to intercept your information.  If they only know your poker Screen Name there is no way for them to target you.  They must actually get in close physical proximity to you in the real world.

Of course UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are now using industry standard SSL encryption so even this “in-person” attacks on your account won’t work anymore, but my point is that this was never a threat to most players at these sites and only a mild threat to the worst-case-scenario people who were logging in and playing real-money poker or an unknown and unsecured wireless network.  For those people, even though this issue has been fixed I sincerely recommend they stop doing that.  And stop accessing their bank and any other financial or sensitive information.

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – February 18, 2010

Oh also, I have this error that occurs sometimes now that I use Table ninja where suddenly the waitlist box doesn't pop up that asks you if you want to join a table so after a while it just says "Sorry u didn't respond in time you have been removed from the waitlist"

So you have to quit your session and restart Poker Stars, so today I didn't feel like it and just stopped leaving tables, I had several where I had around $130 - $150 it was definitely more interesting, and surprisingly there were a fair amount of people with at least $100 today so I played quite a few deeper stacked.
I don't think I ever really got it in behind in these spots with big stacks, I had one where I had flop came I cbet, bet the turn and then the river brought a Ten that wasn't a club so I made a smaller river bet because at this point I was a little worried what this guy could call a river bet with that I beat, he banked for a while and just called with T9 for the rivered 2 pair and took down about a $115 pot.

Then the 2 biggest pots I was in were me in the BB with AK  SB raises $5, I raise to around $18 he 3 bets to $45 or $50 and I shove for $120 he calls with A9 and flops a 9.
Then the worst was:  Me in MP with AK probably around $125 stack,    Average deep stack player (16/12) opens guy to his left 3 bets, this guy is like a 68/24 so I'm not too worried about him and I 4 bet to around $40 or so, they both call.
Flop comes     check, loose fish donks $20 into me, I shove for the remainder of my stack, EP folds and he calls, turns over and rivers a 6 for a pot of around $230 or so.  I never sucked out on anyone in deep stack pots but took a couple so that didn't help but I definitely found it more interesting.

I'll probably try taking more shots like this before just buying in for a full stack everywhere, this way I can ease into it and hopefully not try doing it too quick before I have a very good grasp on it.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 – February 2, 2010

Sorry about the no updates, i just figured I would wait for something more significant to report rather than just "made 4500 vpps today etc"

Anyway, burnout:  So far no burnout, sometimes toward the very end of the day, the last hour or so  it will drag a little bit but not bad, but really, ALL work drags at some point.  But no overall it's great, my wife still works where I used to, and EVERY day she goes to work I'm glad I'm not heading there myself.

Although you are right about my basic zero winrate, it still feels like a winrate to me, I guess at this point I'm still learning and really trying to perfect my ranges and values when I'm 3 bet or when I 3 bet etc and so I am still always thinking about my game, and although my winrate /100 isn't very good I still brought in almost $800 and EV wise almost 1200 which is pretty good for monthly, and my very first full time month making this my job I brought in $7500 which is more than I've ever made at any other job so I'm not down about it at all.

I actually don't see much obstacles in making 1 million, I am SURE there will be some burnout in the future but for now it goes well and my vpps stack up pretty quick and I am hopeful that I will keep overachieving so if I do need a week off later on it wont be a big deal, but every week i continue to be encouraged by my progress.

I have no plans to move up because it is mostly the same people, the vpps do NOT double at 2/4 or 3/6 though the swings would so for now I like where I'm at.

I still think PokerStars would be INSANE to change there buyins, the rules of poker are you have to buyin for at least 20bb people don't like it cuz they say the fish play there but wont play at the 50bb minimum tables (why wouldn't they?) so I think its  just people wanting it ALL there way and no compromise, I'm playing within the rules as are all people playing at these levels, I’ve seen increase in people playing at these levels so PokerStars should be making more money, but if they DO decide to follow Full Tilt, I will initially just buyin for more, but would be strongly looking toward moving to full stacking, I am VERY interested in moving up to full stacking, I just don't know how I will initially do it, I'll need a much larger BR to do it, and I really don't want to move down and kill my VPPs, but if PokerStars DOES make us move up to 35bb I think we will probably get more VPP/hand so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing and I do feel I'm one of the better short stackers and so I still feel I'd be doing ok if we had to move up, so yeah on one side, things are going quite well, this is my livelihood now so of COURSE I don't want them to suddenly change things mid year, i think that is really immoral and I think it was wrong of Full Tilt to do it without much warning other than just a vague "we are going to probably change stuff" and I hope PokerStars doesn't follow, BUT if they DO a part of me would be intrigued to get that push to try playing with bigger stacks.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Supernova Elite Pursuit 2010 Jan 6

January 6, 2010

Well another day, another 4,000 Vpps, and another stale mate in BR.

I started off today doing well, probably just getting a better run of cards than normal, or maybe flopping better, I was up over 200 in EV after an hour or so but my BR was still below zero, after a 3 - 4 hour session I ended up only +60 in $EV and down $55 in BR.  I started gearing up to play again but was just looking at how dismal the VPPs had been ever since the new year and how nitty the tables had been, it was rare to get a 3bet shove called by anything less than JJ or AK, finally after talking to another guy playing who was playing 200NL I realized his VPP/hand was basically the same as last year, so after a little discussion we decided... it was time for a shot at 200NL.

I started off and was in the middle of a hurricane.  EVERY bet I got was called or raised, every c-bet called or raised, if I checked the turn the river was bet, it was nuts, i was starting to think these guys were all MASSIVE calling stations.  For a while I was considering only playing AA or KK and just open shoving lol these guys were THAT loose.

Finally though it started to calm down, I think I probably just had a really high amount of opponents with good cards or hitting the flop better because it was unlike anything i had ever seen.  Also the vast majority of all PFRs are min raises.  I decided to follow suit for a while to see how this would work for me since I steal a lot.  This made it easier to get away from 3 bets when I had inferior hands or on the flop since the pot wasn't so big.

Err... I don’t have  as much time to type out all I ran into on the first day but one thing I DO need to get better at is keeping the pot smaller when I dont have the biggest of hands, it's tough because some people are totally willing to stack off with me with just say KJ on a Jxx board, or maybe T8 on a 854 board, but other times I can almost tell I'm beat but end up still calling with top pair and getting crushed by a set, a straight or two pair.  I think I need to try and keep the c-bets smaller so as not to get stacked so often when I'm way behind, but I guess we'll see.  I am starting to think though that this level would be the best out of any level I've played to just shove more aggressively, I was pretty shocked by what my 3bet shoves were called by today.  Tomorrow is another day, more to come and hopefully even if I do lose (which Im very much expecting) i learn something and it isn’t just useless free fall...

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

Super Nova Elite Pursuit 2010 (MellowYellow)

One of the www.lowlimitforum.com members is looking to achieve 1,000,000 PokerStars VPPs this year in order to get the highest level of VIP rewards at PokerStars.  He started a mini-blog of his progress on the forum in January, and now with his permission I’m sharing them with the blog readers as we’ll eventually catch up to where he is in his pursuit now…

January 2, 2010

The New Year is here, the year of the hopeful grinder... hopefully I hope.

Currently I am still playing Full Ring 100NL, this has been the softest game imo and thus far I've been beating it at a fairly good rate, that coupled with the fact that the VPPs are fair makes it my current choice.

SNE takes 1 million points, the goal then without being TOO unrealistic is 20,000 VPPs /week for 50 weeks/year.  This gives me around 2 weeks of vacation or sickness etc.

At 100NL this will take some doing, the VPP/hand is usually around .28 - .3  that means while playing 24 tables I generally get over 400/hour.  So if I play 9 hours /day (3  3hour sessions) I will only have 18,000 after 5 days and need to put in another 4 - 5 hours on Sat to get to 2,000.  This shouldn't be too bad, taking 2 days off seems a little hard right now, I don't often have a lot planned for the weekend so sitting around all day with nothing to do is pretty likely so I doubt I'll have trouble playing on the 6th day as well.
Obv stepping up to 200NL would make life MUCH easier in terms of VPPs I wouldn't even have to put in a full 40 hours/week at that rate but I've found the games much more challenging in my limited shots I've taken... However, there is some encouraging news.  As I think I've mentioned there are 4 of us in our circle all going for SNE and 2 of the other players have already begun playing 200NL and thus far their results are pretty encouraging, so the chance that after playing 40 - 50 hours/week for the whole year I will improve enough to at least be able to break even or be a slight winner at 200NL after consulting with the others is pretty high.  For now I am just going to keep plugging away at 100NL and hopefully continue building my BR.

My short term goal is a monthly one.

If I put in 6 days/week for the remaining month and play 9 hours/day I should be able to get about 3,600 VPPs/day, coupled with the 4,000 I got on January 1st, I should find myself with 94,000 when February begins.  This will put me a little ahead of the game and give me a little cushion should something unforeseen come up, I hope to ALWAYS stay ahead of the pace.

Also as I said above, 20,000 VPPs/week = 50 weeks to hit my goal.
If I get 21,000/week we would be done in a little under 48 weeks giving 4 weeks of vacation.
And if we bump it up to 22,000/week we only need 45.5 weeks to get there which would be more than an entire MONTH of vacation off.

So a few extra VPPs/day would really add up.

Anyway for now I'm just going to keep getting my volume in and try and make sure I don't start playing on auto pilot and make silly mistakes, that seems to be the biggest risk atm, I know I can beat the game, but there are times when I find myself making really obvious mistakes because I start to day dream or get too tired, I think once I get better at avoiding that my win rate will go up quite a bit more.

Good luck in 2010 all.

MellowYellow @ Low Limit Poker Forum

UB Jackpot Hits Half Million

Yes…

 

Just saying… There’s an article on the Low Limit Holdem Strategy and Tactics site on Jackpot Table Strategy that is worth looking at especially at sites like UltimateBet where the entire limit gets a share of the jackpot (everyone sitting at a $0.50/$1 limit table will get a piece of the JP if it is won by someone at the table above for example)

Good luck!

Tipping the Dealer in Live Poker Games

One of the visitors at Low Limit Holdem Strategy and Tactics recently shared their tipping strategy with us and gave us permission to share it with you…

I am not a professional poker player nor do I play for leisure; I am somewhere in the middle.  As my passion for cards grew, so did the amount of money that I was putting at risk and, while I am able to responsibly maintain my bankroll in the discretionary column of the domestic balance sheet, I am very conscientious of its health.  This was not always the case.  A friend and I were exchanging thoughts on career poker players a while back and he posed a simple question - how profitable was my play.  I had read extensively from the literary canon dedicated to the subject, spent hours applying various strategies and refining my game and knew that the deal presidents had reproduced but I was unable to quantify the most basic business metric.  At that moment, it occurred to me that my favorite pastime just became more complicated.

How many well intentioned entrepreneurs with great ideas had their dreams go unrealized because they neither understood nor could apply the required business practices to manage a successful company?  The cold hard reality is that if you want to play for other than simple leisure, you need to make more money than you lose.  Read just one book on playing poker you will realize that the author’s focus is on explaining a wide range of issue a player needs to consider in order to maximize the odds of a particular outcome.  Now read ten more books and ask yourself how much attention has been dedicated to minimizing expenses.  I am not talking about probabilistic risk reduction; I am talking about non-poker theory related cost reduction.  Consider this: you drive 30 miles to play in your favorite game, when you sit down you are 60 round-trip miles in gas and 1 hour in time behind (whatever that translates to in monetary terms) and you have not even posted your first blind.

Read the rest of the article Tipping in Live Poker games on www.lowlimitholdem.com