So after an incredible amount of thought and a pretty discouraging downswing, I decided I needed help beyond the occasional HH review or sweat session with my Coach.  Without getting into specific details here, I entered into an agreement with him to share some of my profits in exchange for some pretty extensive coaching.  So as a result I’ve had more coaching time in the last month or so than I’ve had in the whole previous year and I think the benefits of that have been priceless for what it’s done for my game.  Not only have I confirmed the things I was doing right, but I’ve been able to weed out some of the things I’ve been doing wrong.  As a result I’ve become extremely confident at the level I am playing at right now.  I’ve also become quite comfortable at playing 12 tables at a time and getting ready to start adding in more. 

Confidence in my opinion, makes all the difference in the world when having to deal with the inevidable downswings that come from time to time.  As long as you not only think, but know your playing well, it’s so much easier to let the bad beats roll off you and move on.  My game is not perfect and completely free of leaks yet, but I feel I am definately on the right path now.

Below is my graph for all $16/18-Mans since the move up.  Thanks to the “extra help”, that downswing I mentioned just prior to starting this deal (around the 1250 game mark, ldo) will soon look like a little hiccup.  Thanks for reading & Good Luck at the tables!!

In my last post I talked about a plan I had with my coach to hit the ground running for this move-up. We decided to get started by having two Hand Histories reviewed followed by a one-hour sweat session, and lastly 2 more Hand History reviews to see if anything managed to sink in.

All of the above went well, and I’ve found that the biggest challenge I’ve had is figuring out who the Reg’s are and even more importantly, who the bad Reg’s are. There’s no doubt that this buyin level has many many more regular players than the $6.50’s did. The good news is many of them are really bad and once you get to know who they are, they are pretty exploitable. (No names will be mentioned in this blog :p)

The other obsacle that I’m struggling with right now is getting used to the higher stakes and the larger swings that come with it. I play between 6 and 12 tables at a time depending on my mood or whatever else is going on in the house; so having upwards of $190+ up for grabs at any given time is something I still have not gotten used to. It’s common to brick several games early in a session and have to commit $300-400 in a single session before winning anything back right away. Coming from a guy who started out with a $4 bankroll that’s a ton of money. This is something that I just hope will pass as time goes on. I’ve spoken to others who have been through this, and it seems to just take time.

So here’s the results of the move-up so far:

1,179 games, 14% ROI, $2,574 Profit

As you can see from the graph, there were some serious downswings mixed in there. Some of that was pure variance and some of that was just playing bad; something I’m trying to avoid doing, obviously.

There’s one more thing I wanted to share here that I’m pretty pleased with. Since last July or so, I’ve been taking snapshots of my Sharkscope Stats for SnGs and put them in order below:

I’m pretty happy that there seems to be a nice steady improvement. I can’t ask for much more than that imo.

Thanks for reading & Good Luck at the table…

1st of all I have give props to gavin555 for having the WBCOOP banner on his blog otherwise I never would have known to enter into this thing.  So thanks bro!  I saw this on his blog and then went through the somewhat painless process of registering for the Tournament Series.  It consists of 4 or 5 events with tickets ranging from $11 to $1090 to the SCOOP events coming up later in the spring.  It’s an extremely top heavy payout structure where you can get like $33 for finishing in the last 4 tables, but to win a bigger ticket than that, you need to Final Table the bitch.  And what a bitch it is. 

A wierd thing about this tournament series is the times they’re being played.  The 1st couple started right at 5PM (which is when I get off from work) so that could create a bit of a problem. 

I had my strategy set up in advance for these early events.  On the day of the 1st (NLHE) event, I figured if I went home without trying to get some chips 1st, I’d be crippled and have no stack, so my plan was to go allin on my 1st playable hand and hope to double up.  This way, when I got home, with a little luck, I’d have something left to play with.  So wouldn’t you know it, the 1st hand I get dealt 88 in middle position.  It get’s limped by a couple of players before it gets to me.  I shove and get called by someone with KQo, (it is a freeroll afterall).  Anywho, I lose the flip and we’re onto to Day 2, Event 2.

This event is Pot Limit Omaha (PLO), a game I’ve never played beyond a few cash hands.  Same start time as the day before, so same stategy applies.  I had nothing for the 1st 2 or three hands, but then wake up to a handful of suited connectors in the BB.  It got limped and limped and limped again before it got to me and I raise the pot.  Everyone folds to the BTN who ends up re-raising the pot which is enough for me to go all in to double up or bust and go home.  I end up making a flush to more than double up and so I get to go home and see how many chips I have left to play with.

To my surprise, I get home about 50 minutes later and I still have over $3000 in chips (Starting stack was $2000), so this is what I had hoped for.  I suck at PLO, but I figured what the hell, let’s see if I can get lucky enough to get an $11 ticket out of this thing. 

Well one thing led to another and I’ll keep this short just by saying I pretty much got slapped in the face with the cards for much of the game and when I needed to make a hand I did.  I cruised passed the $11 ticket and had a chance to move up to the $33 ticket.  The nice thing about PLO is, the pots can get huge, especially when they’re multi-way.  People love to limp and see cheap flops.   The good luck, mixed with a little bit of well timed aggression and bluffing (yeah bluffing in a freeroll, lol) led me to a decent stack at the final two tables.  I ended up sweating it out and more or less folding to the final table waiting for 3 or 4 ministacks to bust out before me.  I ended up taking 8th getting it in about as good as you can aipf with AAKQ double suited, but the hand missed and who cares, ’cause I walked away with a $215 ticket to the SCOOP coming up in a few months. WooooHoooo!! 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, the Main Event of WBCOOP is this Sunday (WIth a $3k ticket to the winner) but I probably won’t be playing in it as it’s my birthday.  I don’t think I could expect a better outcome anyways as there will be many more people in that one and again a bigtime topheavy payout structure. 

Anyways, stay tuned & hopefully I’ll have something to blog about after the SCOOP event.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Free Poker Download at PokerStars

Registration code: 987895

As planned I stopped withdrawing money in Mid-December in order to build the bankroll for an attempt at moving up the $16 ($15+1) 18-Man SnGs after the Holidays.  I am in the middle of that move up attempt right now, and so far so good. 

I don’t think I’ve officially acknowledged the guy who has made the most significant improvement in my game here in the blog although most of my “Poker Buddies” are sick of me talking about him, so I will do so now.  Quite early in 2009 a PM discussion started with a guy on another (to remain nameless) Poker Forum that started out pretty hostile (as most discussions at that forum do imo), but after the guy realized that I wasn’t an idiot he took an interest and eventually put me in touch with Ben Reasons aka reasons14 and said he might be able to coach me.  At the time my bankroll was $140 and I had been spinning my wheels at $6 9-Man SnGs (highly under bankrolled) not really going anywhere.  I started discussing coaching with Ben even though I had just about no “extra” money in the bankroll to pay for it.  I bit the (although more than fair priced) bullet and started paying him to help me.  It started out with a few hand history reviews and then a couple of Live Sweat sessions where we’d connect with Mikogo & Skype and he’d be able to critique my games in real time.  He hadn’t been coaching for that long at the time and his prices were more than reasonable (HA, no pun intended).  All I can say is WOW!!! Not only did the coaching pay for itself and then some, it got me on track to making over $3k in pure profit in 2009.  Needless to say Ben’s prices have gone up (as they should), but he’s still worth way more than he charges.  If you want his contact info, let me know. 

Anywho, he and I have a plan that I feel will contribute to making this move up as successful as the last one, so stay tuned and let’s see how this all turns out. Wish me Luck… please? 

I’ve far exceeded my original goal of ever withdrawing $$$ to consider myself a winning player having withdrawn well over $1000 in the past few months alone.  I have also stuck to my rule of keeping 100 buyins online before withdrawing, so thats nice.  That extra bankroll has come in handy to prevent tilt during this last month which has been by far my worst one in half a year.

I took a couple of mini-shots at moving up to the $15+1 18-Man SnG’s but although I held my own and didn’t lose $$, it’s a little unnerving to have well over $100 out there at the tables when I’m not properly rolled for it.  So I’ve put on hold any plans to move up for now.  In fact, I think I may just get back to my routine of the last few months of withdrawing regularly until the dust settles from whatever may happen after December comes and goes.  The extra $$$ will come in handy for Christmas as well.  (Wow, that sounds so degen, doesn’t it??)

This last month has shown me that moving up to the next level isn’t going to be as easy as it was to move up from the last level, but I’m not going to rush myself.  I’m just a little on the plus side in profit overall for October when I count a $75 Cash from a freeroll on Full Tilt Poker, so I really can’t complain.  I’ve almost climbed myself out of this little hole called variance I’ve put myself in, so wish me luck finishing the current climb on my way to the next mountain.

Since I’ve never been able to make any significant deposits on poker sites, I feel that I’ve been missing the boat when it comes to “whoring” the bonuses.  That is, until now…

Fult Tilt Poker announced this special bonus where no deposit is necessary.  As long as you’ve ever played a real money hand (which I have plenty) at their site, they’re offering random amount bonuses between $100-500 (unlucky me ended up with the $100 variety).  Thanks to a friend (Thanks Kegs!) I was able to get some money on the site and try it out.  Before I go into how that’s going; just a couple of days later, PokerStars announces their own unique bonus promotion.  PokerStars is offering up to a $300 deposit bonus (50% of up to $600).  But what makes it even better is you can deposit the $600 in up to 3 smaller deposits over the course of 90 days; SWEET!!!  So now, I just have to figure out a way to “whore” both of these bonuses…  Think BigL, think!!

I got it!  Since I’ve been kicking ass and taking names (The Poker Gods don’t read blogs, right…. …RIGHT???) with the money I had started with on Full Tilt, I was able to take some off and make my 1st Deposit on PokerStars locking in the availability of the bonus.  Now I have 90 days to deposit the rest of the $600.  So far so good.  I love it when a plan comes together. 

As for the bonus at Full Tilt, it’s not going so well. After playing like 70 of my regular 18-Man SnG’s I’ve only earned about $15 (less than 5% of the money I’ve won in playing those games) of the $100 available bonus; and with the slow pace that the games fill up over there, it would take many more hours than I usually play to clear the bonus.  So from a bonus standpoint, Full Tilt’s isn’t for me.  From a games standpoint, the jury’s still out.  It’s hard to turn my back on a site where I’ve got an ROI of over 75% (small sample obviously). 

So to make a long story short (yeah yeah, too late, sorry), At the very least, I’m hoping to make enough money on Full Tilt plus some other money made from staking some players to make the maximum deposit allowed to get the full $300 bonus when I start grinding regularly back on PokerStars.  So I think in my case, it’s OK to whore it up a little.  I don’t even feel dirty. J  Next Stop on the Whore Express?  Doyle’s Room?  Reefer Poker?  Me love you long time..

Luckily for me, this time was VERY different than the last attempt.  Not only did I jump aboard a heater that earned me nearly $500 before slowing down, I was able to make my 1st ever withdrawal from PokerStars and still leave over 100 buyins online.  This has been a goal of mine for, well, forever.

As luck would have it, the withdrawal doomswitch tried to screw with me a bit, but with the help of my coach and a newfound tilt resistant mindset I managed to play through a small rough patch and get through to the other side and continue the ramp upward.

So after playing 250 of these games I figured it was time for an update for the blog…
250 games, +$513 for an ROI of 32% and counting.  Here’s the graph:

Since I created this graph a few days ago I’ve won around a dozen more buyins and made my 2nd withdrawal this month, still leaving over 100 buyins in the bankroll.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned (mostly the painful, hard way) is solid bankroll management is key.  I simply do not and cannot play my A Game unless I’m completely comfortable with my bankroll. 

I’ll end this latest blog entry with one more mini-brag (yeah, I know, teh poker gods are probably reading this!).  After a decent session last night, I have just surpassed the $1k profit mark on Sharkscope.  It was just a few weeks ago when I was talking to my coach about getting back to the $300 mark (a number I hadn’t seen in several thousand games) when he told me I’d be up to $400 and $500 before I know it.  Needless to say, I’m not looking to wake up from this dream anytime soon.

So, as planned I opened up a set of 6 games and lost two pretty quickly from pure bad luck (imo).  So as usual I fired up a couple more to get back to playing 6 games at once.  Well, I won’t go into specific detail, but the session didn’t go well.  I bubbled out of at least half of them getting called by people who clearly had no clue how to play and some of the rest, I admittedly didn’t play my best.  So to make a long story short, as promised I moved back down to $3.40’s.  On the up side, I saw very little difference in the quality of play between the two levels, so I moved back down feeling very confident that when I move up for another shot, I’d have little to worry about.  On the down side, I surely didn’t expect my shot to come and go in the very 1st session.

Well, to make matters worse (oh, and btw, this blog entry does have a happy ending, so stay tuned), I lost several more buyins after moving down to the $3.40’s which made it even more of a job to regain my losses from the shot I took at moving up.  But before long, variance turned around and I regained my high win-rate at these games.  Here’s a graph taken from Sharkscope on my $3.40 18-Man games.  I’m something like 22% ROI over a sample of about 500 games:

So I’m almost ready to take my second shot at the $6.50 18-Mans.  But this time, I’ve squirreled away enough to take a more serious shot in the neighborhood of 15 buyins.  So the same rules apply.  I will take my second shot at the next level (probably sometime in the next week) and if I lose 15 buyins from where I started, right back down I’ll go.  I’m prepared to rinse and repeat as often as necessary.  One thing I’m doing differently this time is mixing in some coaching to help this move-up be more successful than the last one.  We’ve come up with a plan of mixing some HH reviews along with a sweat session or two.  So wish me luck, as the my next blog entry will be written about the results of this next shot moving on up.

I’ll probably write another blog entry at some point about my experiences of being coached, but I’ll leave that for another time.  But I will say that my coach has tranformed himself into more of a MTT SnG player where he’s earned most of his (major by my standards) winnings in 18-Man SnG’s.  He has been kind of mentioning this to me since I 1st started talking to him.  And he’s finally worn me down to the point of giving some 18-Man’s a try.  So I tried a couple of $6.50 18-Man SnGs back in late April I guess it was and liked them immediately.  What a difference from the 9-Man’s I’d gotten used to!  There is a lot of different strategy that goes into these games vs. the Single Table variety and it was like starting to play for the 1st time again in many ways, which I found exciting!

Since the Variance in MTTs is typically much higher than the 9-mans, I figured I’d better move down to the $3.40 18-Mans and test the waters before risking an already inadequate bankroll.  Although the rake is higher at the $3.40’s, I’ve been told the games are (even) softer, and I was already comfortably bankrolled for this level. 

I played almost the entire month of May in these $3.40 18-Mans exclusively, with a remarkable almost 30% ROI (return on investment) until the very last weekend of the month when my ROI dipped down to around 20%.  But even so, this was a huge increase in the >10% ROI I had been earning at the 9-Man games.  And although I’m still dealing with a relatively small sample size, I can easily see that these games are waaaay +EV for me. 

I was going to talk about my shot at moving up to the $6.50 18-Man SnGs in this Entry, but I’ll save that for next time.  Until then,  Keeeeep Grindin’!!!