First ever VIP tier!

Yeah! Another first! tonight I just earned enough points to take me to "base camp" at Everest.

It was one hell of a ride though. I really struggled this month - won then lost over and over until finally breaking through the plateau tonight.

Still got 54 points to make before completing the bonus but I've got another two weeks to do that :)

Gonna take a few days off now since there's not much point trying to earn more points in March right now - it's 3000 points to the next tier.

Signed up for another 500 point challenge

I got the same bonus offer as last month on Everest so thought I'd give it a go but I've just logged in for the first time today and... no cash games running.

D'oh!

The Feb 09 story so far

Well, I've been very quiet this month, coming to terms with my horrendous performance at Titan after seemingly doing so well at Everest.

I've concluded that the players at Titan at the nano stakes on the whole play what is referred to as "solid poker" - possibly even ABC poker. I reckon that because of this, there's not much point playing at the tables because you would have to play equally solid play all the time to meek out a meagre existence there.

That's why it's easy to lose money fast playing loose but hard to get money back : you don't get any action unless people have good hands, so when *you* have a good hand, you're unlikely to get paid unless its one of those rare occaisions when good hand meets good hand and then it could go either way.

I can't see any point playing in those ring games. too boring and too little reward at $.1/$.2 or even $.25/$.50. Maybe as I get better I'll realise I'm just making excuses but for now, this is my theory and I'm sticking to it!

So, I've switched back to six-max at Titan because you can find loser players there. For instance, I had an amazing session tonight... initially I was continuing my usual bad run of cards combined with overly aggressive play - ended up down $9.00 at $.1/$.2! (45 big bets). Then the cards changed and some looser players joined the table and within 30-60 minutes, I had won almost $12, turning the session from a big loss to a respectable win rate! (6BB/100).

The harsh truth at Titan

Oh my, have had a real bad streak at Full Ring on Titan. The players are a lot better than Everest even at $.1/$.2. I started out at $.25/$.50 and managed to donk $20! Mainly through overly aggressive bluffy play. Oh dear. I think the stint of 6-max really changed my game.

Have dropped down to $.1/$.2 and had a break even session tonight but it will take me forever to build back my bankroll at these tight aggressive tables :(

Life of a maniac

Oh my. Just tried 6-handed at $.25/$.50 on Titan. Started with $15. Completely donked! Lucky to break even. I kept making some doe then passing it to the guy on my left. Eventually he got up and walked off with the winnings. I was trying to bluff too much basically. No one respected my raises.

The most frustrating thing about 6 handed is how quickly the table breaks up.

Trying 6-handed at Titan

Up until now I've occasionally applied full ring strategies and hand selection to short-handed limit games with mixed results. I'd had a few really good sessions, and lots of bad sessions where I was just bullied off the tables. I still ended up ahead in Jan for 6-max play but only because I got away from the bad sessions before they blew a big hole in my bankroll.

the experience pointed out a few things:
- there are a lot more limit short-handed tables than limit full ring
- the tables are way more aggressive
- consistent winners had higher VPIP than I was used to in full ring
- the blinds were brutal - if you tried to play fullring nitty tight, the blinds really started to dent your stack
- I would struggle to work out the adjustments required for short-handed without help

So one of my treats for good behaviour in January (i.e. not splurging any money on unnecessary stuff) was the book "Limit Hold'em: winning short-handed strategies" by Terry Borer and Lawrence Mak.

Have now skim read everything upto pre-flop starting hand ranges. Pretty deep stuff. Lot of useful info and a few chuckles thrown in too.

Had a little practice session on Titan at $.1/$.20 and, after putting an entire table on tilt through overly aggressive play (I started off a bit too excited and bluffed way too much), I got paid off enough to practically double my initial buyin (30BB). I acted like a doucebag and took off at that point because it was getting late.

Everest Bonus Achieved!

wohoo! did it! got to 500 points and Everest put an extra $50 in my account!

The move to $.5/$1.0 really helped. I cleared 120 points in the last three days - over 30 points tonight in about 2 hours.

Well, I'm pretty chuffed. First bonus I've ever cleared :D

Nuff said.

Progressing to $.50/$1.00

I usually buy in for $15 at $.25/$.50 and as my bankroll improved, it became increasingly tempting to try my hand at $.50/$1.0. The biggest benefit of doing so was faster point collection towards the Everest bonus. However, I was pretty scared to try incase I lost everything.

So, I set a limit X and told myself that if my account reached that value, I would try buying in for $30 at $.50/$1.0 on the basis that I would stop if I lost $10.

Yesterday my balance reached the required amount so I had no excuse.

I was so scared! However, I realised that if I was scared of losing and played passively, I'd be an easy target for the aggressive regulars.

I opened one table, playing as aggressively as my nerves would allow but lost $5.00 quite quickly. Decided to open another table anyway to balance the odds of getting bad cards a little.

I was a nervous wreck after an hour and ended the session - just about even.

Have played a few more times since and got my first big payoff (i.e. someone paid me off with a poor hand) today. Feeling more comfortable at this limit now but the play is definitely more tricky than $.25/$.50.

These sessions taught me a few things:

• it can be difficult adjusting to loses at the higher level because they look bigger (i.e. 3 big bets at $.50/$1.0 still looks like 6 big bets to me)
• play at $.50/$1.0 is much tighter and more aggressive in general. I'd say 80% of the time, everyone folds to a pre-flop raise from early or mid position so blind steals and isolation plays are more common.
• points go up more than twice as fast as at $.25/$.50 given similar playing conditions. Unfortunately, if the table is reduced to "nits", the majority of hands don't see the flop.
• when the table is ultra-tight, raising with big hands in early position is unlikely to get any action so its probably better to open-limp and hope to re-raise a mid/late play.
• also when the table is ultra-tight, you can raise a wider range of hands in mid/late cos of the fold equity. However, you don't want to do this too often because you see some observant players getting suspicious (taking longer to fold the blinds).
  

There's probably more but that'll do for now!

Results in for January

I'm pleased to announce that I completed January in the black thanks to Everest. I've also reached the point where I can just about 4-table a mix of $.10/$.20 and $.25/$.50 tables and break even.

I'm pretty astonished really. Can't say its been easy and I'm left wondering just how much of it is attributable to being on the right side of variance. I suppose we'll find out over the months to come!

The total "earn" isn't a life changing amount but the 4000 hands I played this month have certainly strengthened my resolve to continue learning and playing poker.

I'm well on the way to the Everest points total required to release the bonus. More on that in the next post.

This month was my baptism to multi-tabling. I can play 3 tables reasonably comfortably at $.25/$.50 (at least on Everest) and have taken the total up to 4 once (maximum record MT ratio for that session was 3.34).

My results at $.25/$.50 seem pretty consistent. Played and won against a number of the regulars though admittedly the sample size is very small (max hands against any one player = 60). I 've also been burnt a number of times trying to play back at maniacs.