Freeroll 2 Bankroll

LTNP

2017-05-22T00:17:00.003-07:00

Long Time No Post

Hi All. Still alive. RL for the last little while has been fulfilling so no poker. Just downloaded stars and slowly absorbing all the changes.... and of course, figuring out what are the freerolls.

The $10 donkaments are now 'The League - Elementary'.

Nice Graphs! Was 6th in chips when I lost most of my stack; my ATs flops KQJ, called allin by KJ who hits the 4 outer.

It's nice to be playing again.

2c hyper 990 BOOM

2014-04-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

Haven't played in a loooong time! Only have T$0.54 cents in my pokerstars account. Decided to play some 10c turbo 360s and 2c hyper 990s until I'm out. And this happens.

Here's the BOOM version... definitely the first time I win a tournament with rockets.

Haven't had one of these in a long while... feels good. It's interesting to see all the east Europeans multi tabling these micro MTTs.

2012-02-18T02:40:00.001-08:00

2012 and I'm finally playing some serious NLHE both online and live. It's taken this long for me to finally get to grips with the NL cash game... good luck to all at the tables in 2012.

Partypoker now the #2 online site in the world LOL

2011-06-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

Whoops, there goes Full Tilt Poker. I never signed up there... never did like paying rake to the better players than you in the poker economy...

Now will Party get back to Numero Uno anytime soon?

2011 WBCOOP 4

2011-01-27T10:08:00.002-08:00

Onward to today's NLHE prelim event #4. GL to all who's playing.

I missed the first one, I was 97/720 in the second, and tired-tilted off my top 10 stack yesterday in the PLO8 third... neat hand though

PokerStars Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, 0 Tournament, 60/120 Blinds (9 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com UTG (t4568) UTG+1 (t29498) MP1 (t1610) MP2 (t4436) MP3 (t15751) CO (t15076) Hero (Button) (t15877) SB (t1671) BB (t1715)

Hero's M: 88.21

Preflop: Hero is Button with 6, A, 2, 8

5 folds, CO bets t360, Hero calls t360, 2 folds

Flop: (t900) Q, 8, 5 (2 players) CO bets t720, Hero raises to t3060, CO raises to t10080, Hero raises to t15517 (All-In), CO calls t4636 (All-In)

Turn: (t30332) 2 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t30332) Q (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t30332

Tournament Lessons

2011-01-23T15:49:00.000-08:00

One thing I must remember in tournaments is the HUD info on a player is NOT indicative of what his range may be with an all-in shove for his tournament life.... especially mid tourney the range is usually quite strong.

With a strong stack mid tourny, I keep donating to the random short stack shoves...

2011 WBCOOP is here

2011-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: XXXXXX 695592

It's been a while

2011-01-20T01:46:00.000-08:00

SNE lurking has been very eye opening. For the past 3 months watching how the players at their different games (SnG, Limit, SSNL, shortstackers, etc. ) each grind their way to their respective VPP goals is fascinating. Here's last year's epic 2011 Pokerstars SNE pursuit thread at 2+2 (they're epic every year).

I'm contemplating going for the simple 100,000 supernova level but like this blog, my procrastination has been the winner this past couple of years. There's much more about that in my many past 'draft' posts that have never made the light of day here because... hey I procrastinate!!

My goal this year is to get my thoughts in order, push out all my posts from the past and start playing 'for real' again.

GL to you all in your 2011 poker endeavors.

All's Right Again

2010-06-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was going strong in my 10K Challenge, and was about to break the $35 bankroll barrier...

Starting with $34.95 in my Stars roll, the poker gods decided to give me a whack for $9 over just 215 hands of 0.05/0.10 and 0.10/0.20 FLH.

[insert every typical series of bad beats know to man here]

I'm back down to just playing 0.05/0.10 FLH until I'm over $30 again.

After a +$2 session, bankroll back to $28.51.

Finally over $30 at Stars

2010-05-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

It took me a while but finally I broke 'well' pass the $30 barrier at Stars and my bankroll now stands at $31.88.

To get there, yesterday I had to luckily misjoined [sic] a couple of 0.10/0.20 FLH tables, got lucky and hit-and-ran for +$2.06 over 13 hands. Sitting at one table with over 10% of my bankroll was not a wise decision.

The biggest mistakes down at these levels? Having the nut flush and not caring that the board has paired.

Now that I'm over $30, I'll most likely play up to 5 tables of 0.05/0.10 FLH until I get to $45+ when I'll start to take shots at the 0.10/0.20 game. At the same time, I need to work out what the correct balance of hand range/aggression to also have a good winrate at the SH limit games.

Back to all time high at PTR

2010-04-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's taken a month... not many hands overall but timewise a whole month for my stats at PTR to show my 'career' high is on the last day of stats they have collected.

I'm almost past $25 at Stars when I can table select my way to playing only 4 tables of .05/.10 FLH.

Would you bet the river?

2010-04-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

2010 Challenge Update 4

2010-04-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

After a relatively huge downswing of over $5 given my tiny bankroll at Stars, I took a breather to reset my game. I realized that when I started this challenge, I was playing at 3-6am PDT. I was playing against bad Russian loose weaks who padded the pot so much that 2-8 outs chasing was profitable, consequently my range was super wide.

But I reset my work schedule so I could play 3-7pm PDT. (ie prime east coast North America fishing time) Here the fishies play slightly better (more like aggro drunk bluff catchers) and a tighter range is more appropriate. So third pair with 5 outs semi-bluff does not work since second pair calls to the river thus those types of lines go right out the window.

Good news is with the change in play, my Stars balance is back to $18.13.

Here is an example of chasing with implied odds on the flop and catching with the third nuts. Seeing the villian's cards, on the turn I only had 7 outs, not 12, but I still had the odds to call.

My Recent Lost of Form

2010-03-31T00:51:00.001-07:00

After starting my 1.58 to 10K challenge with a bang, recently the run of cards has been against me. Oh all the usual stuff of draws all missing, all made hands cracked, and some loose play on my part because of my recent run.

Here's a typical hand recently:

Villian's checking his runner runner quads on the river..... priceless!

Lucky for me, this is happening after I'd built up the balance at Stars to over $20 and not at the beginning of the challenge... so goes variance!

Stars balance is at $15.16.

10K Challenge Update 3

2010-03-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

The 1.58 has now become 20.46 so the challenge is going well. Still haven't been really playing very much, just 4 tabling for a couple of orbits at a time. I'm table selecting though even at these micro stakes and the table dynamics change fast since the really bad players lose so quickly.

Overall my winrate is still above 14BB/100 but I've been having heaters on the 0.05/0.10 table that covers any loss on my cooler 0.02/0.04 tables.

I think once I reach $25, I'll play 2 tables of each stake instead of 1 high and 3 low.

Another thought I got recently is I won't take any NL chances until I have 30BI (Buy Ins) for the NL2 game which translates into a bankroll of $60.

I'll also won't plan the year further until I get to a bankroll of around $300+ since when I get there will determine how much and at what stakes I'll need to play to seriously attempt at the 10K.

On Taking Shots and Bankroll Management

2010-03-11T18:28:00.001-08:00

In an earlier post I mentioned that since my bankroll grew past $10, I would be taking shots at the 0.05/0.10 FLH game.

I got two emails asking me what did that mean so here's a post to explain my thinking.

When I started my 2010 1.58 to 10K challenge, I started with only 1.58 so I could only 2-table 0.02/0.04 FLH since a typical 20BB buyin is 0.80. When I reached a bankroll of $12, a 300BB bankroll for playing 0.02/0.04 FLH (which is the generally accepted bankroll size you should have to play limit), I knew I was 'safe' at that level from busting my whole bankroll.

So I was willing to 'take shots' at the next level up which is 0.05/0.10 FLH. Instead of playing 4-tables of the lower stakes, I would play 3 tables of the lower stakes and 1 table of the higher. As long as I'm running good, my bankroll should move up at a faster rate and when I get to $25-$30, I can 4-table fully at 0.05/0.10.

My bankroll now stands at 16.59!

Life's Good

2010-03-02T06:48:00.002-08:00

Challenge Update 2

2010-02-28T05:23:00.002-08:00

I didn't think I would be making this post for another couple of days but my bankroll at Stars broke $10 so here I am. I was planning to post either when I broke $10 or played 1000 hands.

According to PTR, I'm just at 956 hands but the play is so loose weak down here at 0.02/0.04 FLH that it's insanely profitable if you know how to play post flop.

Here's a hand from my last session that illustrates the point:

A top pair and an overpair to the board calls down to lose to my random 5 outs on the flop! I'm OOP so any raise flop or turn kicks me out with so little in the pot. I was expecting the top pair but the pocket QQ was quite a surprise.

Now with over 100bb for the 0.05/0.10 FLH level, I'm gonna start taking shots at this next level. Next milestone to hit is $25.

Challenge Update 1

2010-02-27T02:05:00.000-08:00

Haven't played much but I should have sometime over the next two weeks to get some hands in.

The 1.58 has now become 8.31. And I'm definitely running at over 20bb/100 playing 0.02/0.04 FLH.

Over the next couple of days, I'll work out the bankroll management strategy for moving up in stakes.

Skill level wise, I should be good playing up to 2/4 FLH and I would like to add some SH and NL micro stakes play into the challenge as well.

Doubleuwhy's Mi_Turtle $1.58 to 10K Challenge

2010-02-15T16:09:00.003-08:00

I've been thinking what would be a good challenge this year to restart this blog with a theme consistent with the title of the blog. Namely building a bankroll from nothing by playing freerolls. If you don't know what I did in 2006, check out my summary.

It's been hard for me to stay true to my blog title since once you've built up a stake, it's just not the same playing hours of freerolls for cashes of less than 0.1% of your bankroll!

So I gotta thank Nick 'Mi_Turtle' Rainey and his 1K last longer bet against the field in this year's WBCOOP Main event. He finished 635th and I lasted until 490th, not ITM for a SCOOP ticket but a share of the 1K for $1.58.

It was a freeroll so now I have my first 'cash' from a freeroll in over a year. (I haven't played much)

As I searched the web to see what other bloggers have done with the 1.58, I came upon a typical 2+2 rant thread on Mi_Turtle's last longer bet.

Thus came the inspiration for the title of my 2010 challenge. Let's see what I can do with the 1.58 and show these 2+2 haters what's possible.

With all the sites out there nowadays putting everyone's play in public, I'll be linking to pokertableratings.com, the 'not so legal to Pokerstars' cash game tracking site to compare the stats I have with what the 'public' can see. It should be fun to see the discrepancies.

Here's what PTR have on me so far. As of today, after 285 hands, I'm running at a 35.18 BB/100 hand rate playing .02/.04 FLH!

I'll get into all the bankroll management stuff as I grind up to a workable bankroll.

This should be fun since in 2006, my bankroll building exercise was from freerolls and casino bonuses. This time, I plan to build the bankroll from playing microstakes cash games and tournaments.

WBCOOP 2010

2010-01-26T19:57:00.002-08:00

I missed the first one.

Donked out the second one today around 600ish.

I like the many different games over the week though and the addition of live twitter feeds @PokerStars_com/wbcoop-players gives each tournament a great feel.

I'll definitely play Sunday's main event. Let's see if I have time to catch some of the other weekday ones as well.

Good luck to all!

2010 Pokerstars WBCOOP

2010-01-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP

Registration code: 747122

Nice 2009 Chart

2010-01-09T15:56:00.003-08:00

Last year, I taught my girlfriend to play poker. Only LHE (Limit Holdem) so far.

I wanted her to understand what the game was all about and the nuances involved in learning the game.

Here's her graph so far after 13 months of playing.

She started at the lowest stakes of .02/.04 FR LHE.

She is now a net winning player at every level up to the .50-1.00 FR level...

Latest challenge for her is to laydown top pair weak kicker, no draw holdings.

I'm thinking of making a series of posts about each poker fundamental she needed to learn as she moved up through the levels of play. The order of the fundamentals is NOT how the game gets taught in most of the poker books out there.

Welcome to 2010

2009-12-31T16:23:00.002-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

I've had a great 2009 even though I didn't blog about it.

My simple goal for 2010 is to regularly post again. Tracking all the ups and downs of one's bankroll is one part of my enjoyment in poker. Keeping score especially if your winning is what helps drive you forward.

The whole online gaming and poker scene has changed so much since I started learning about it all in 2006. It'll be interesting to post as I explore all the new resources available for the game.

Hope you all have a great 2010 poker year!

The Black Swans of Poker

2009-12-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of 19 articles he has written for the New Yorker.

Among them is this one, all about Nassim Taleb and his investment philosophy. Taleb is the guy who wrote Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.

Reading the article, it got me thinking about how successful 1/2 NLHE live players play. They seemingly play many 'wrong' hands losing the minimum most hands by seeing cheap flops on passive tables. Then the Black Swan event happens when an AKs opponent min raises preflop. Flops AK2 and decides to trap. Turn is a 4, everything goes in, and the fish gets angry losing to 53o.