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You’ve all heard of Sklansky Dollars and G-Bucks by Phil Galfond right? I’m sure there’s some +/-EV there for Rail Bucks somehow, I’m no mathematician so there are no formalas or calculations here I’m afraid. Those of you who know me well enough will certainly know that I railed a lot of tournaments in the past but not the high-stake cash games.
I do admit it’s good fun to see how a player’s chips grow vastly or their demise in receiving an outrageous bad beat, it gets more interesting to see how the final table plays out. It has gotten to the point where it’s normal to see my friends winning 4-5 figures whereas a few years ago it would be amazing to see such a feat.
A lot of questions popped into my head when I first started railing – things like:
* Why is he raising so small?
* What can he be 3betting here with?
* Surely that’s a squeeze?
But I also aim to put people on hand-ranges and try to pinpoint their hand with great accuracy based on the betting pattern, sometimes I even bother with the suits. I used to also write notes on how people raise as the blinds went up, I then tried it for myself and realised that I got far deeper in tournaments than I ever did before.
Then there’s stack sizes to consider, it’s funny when someone with 10BB will raise 3-4bb and still pass when they missed the flop. Other fun things to notice are the sweat cards on the Turn and how their opponents outs always seem to follow on the River i.e. runner runner straight/flush/full house.
Nowadays I do it purely out of habit but when I first used to rail it was to get tips on how to play without actually having to ask – as mentioned above. So it has turned from being +EV by learning how players play to just railing them mind-numbly and I’d say it’s now -EV because I could be using that time to be playing or improving on my game instead.
So the next time you rail – think of the Rail Bucks you could potentially gain or lose.
I may have been a bit ambitious saying I would play 10,000 hands this month, so far I have only managed 3500 hands at $50NL and a pathetic 1250 hands at $25NL. I am still finding my feet this month and the lack of volume put in is not a good start, at least I will still be on Platinum Status until the end of next month so all is not lost. I’m just worried that I won’t be able to reach the June bonus as planned, there’s still a week to go so perhaps this is still feasible.
I purchased a geeky piece of software called Holdem Manager last weekend and a lot of players prefer it over PokerTracker so felt I made a good choice. At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking I were sat at a Bloomberg Terminal but with playing cards – there’s certainly a lot of stats you can record from the players that you come across on the virtual tables but I really need to customise a HUD that works for me so that I can absorb the data instantly.
I have reduced the number of tables from 6-8 to 3-4 because there’s too many numbers on screen as it’s overwhelming and currently a distraction! Hopefully soon all this will become second nature to me and my decisions will be lightning quick so I can bump up the tables again. It was only recently that I could multi-table as many as 8 on my tiny laptop screen, it was to bump up my VPPs to qualify for the May VIP Promo playing Fixed Limit $0.50/$1.00, I got used to it quite well and when I did play the NL tables it wasn’t so bad either.
I did have to install a piece of software called x-mouse to deal with the table overlapping though. This awesome software, brings to the front, the window your mouse is hovering over so that you don’t have to click the table you want. Saving a click each time will save you a lot of time which of course can save you money! I don’t have the URL to hand but I’m sure you can Google it.
The last few weeks have been a roller-coaster, I started off up almost 2 buy-ins then it swung down to almost a 4 buy-in loss and been trying to get out of the hole ever since. I then decided to make yet another change to my game by switching from $50NL Full Ring to 6-max, I must say that Full Ring is so boring because it’s such a tight game, 6max should help my hand reading skills, reads on players and more importantly – improve my aggression.
I finally managed to claw back out of the hole recently and in profit for $1.55 which I am happy with. However, this is still early days evident from the number of hands played but it would appear that I do better in the 6max games. I will continue my journey with cash in 6max and further develop my game in this format via forums, videos and time on the tables.
Despite the lack of hands played, it has been an interesting month on the tables as I am still settling in. Hopefully I’ll have time to increase the volume to at least double next month and not to go below the $0 line ever again.
Bring on the uphill graphs!
As you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t quite win 4 figures since my last update, easy tell when I win because I’d usually tell the world! I’m not really one for ‘Getting it Quietly’, nor do I keep it quiet when others win, it’s just how I am.
I was very close though, the last two attempts got me very close to the final table in the 20 cubed. One was a silly shove with A5o in the HJ for 11BB, got looked up by 77 but no love on the board so I’m out of that one. The recent one being a cooler where I had AA v 99 and the flop was K9K, busted out 17th (for $220) where if I won that pot (approx 45BB) I’d have easily made the final table to earn 4 figures with a damn good chance of winning the tournament!
If I put enough volume in I’m sure it would be my bread and butter tournament but it takes up a lot of time! LUFCBas was mega chip leader going into the final table over the weekend but got too sleepy to rail, woke up to find that he busted out 4th – I’m disappointed! Especially when a handful of us have already won this tournament including M555SSM, bubs26 and rivermanl so would have been good to see him on the list too. I am still leading with two victories though and looking for a hatrick soon! 
In other news, one of my Gutshot friends jono3101 is blessed at the moment. For a laugh he entered a 50 FPP satellite on Friday and won $11 turbo seat. He played it and managed to bash up the whole field of 2160 to win the top prize of $3510, the same night he plays the $100 cubed and finished 3rd for $4949. Amazing stuff but it doesn’t end there – on Sunday he played a $109 rebuy satellite to the WSOP Main Event and won one of the two seats available! That’s over $20,000 from a 50 FPP spin up – why can’t I run this good?!
I intend to play a few live tournaments in the near future, The International Club (Gutshot) have announced their festival coming up and I’m interested in the £500 2-day Main Event on 4th-5th July. With 10,000 chips and an hour clock this should suit me well, there is a BAP on SAS if anyone would like to invest.
They have also announced a PSOP festival in August which is a partnership with Paradise Poker and introducing their first £1000 Main Event with £10K added to the prizepool, apparently they will be using the floor above to allow for 400 runners – awesome!
This lead me to check out DTD’s festival as I’m sure it would clash, it turns out that they have now moved their £250K GTD to December and the £500K GTD is now to be announced for 2010 sometime. I can’t blame them though, would be pretty disastrous to have another big overlay.
That’s it for tournaments but will post a cash update very soon.
First of all I want to apologise for not decorating my blog with embedded pictures yet, I can’t really Google for images of hot totties whilst at work otherwise I might as well do that instead of writing. It’s bad enough reading BlackShuck’s blog in case someone is looking over my shoulder, it’s a case of insta-scrolling down so I get to the text which funnily enough is what I have to do when I’m on the EMS Forum because of the huge logo that blatantly says ‘POKER’ lol. So this weekend I’ll alter my posts so hopefully there will be some eye candy to attract more readers.
Time for a cash update:
I have played 4 hourly sessions at $25NL since Sunday which totals around 1250 hands for a slight profit of approx $13, I am really enjoying the grind so far despite not getting many VPPs/FPPs for it. This lead me to reassess and felt that I should be playing $50NL to see if I could cope – having Platinum Status is a waste at $25NL.
My first $50NL session last night started off well and was quickly up 2 buy-ins whilst playing 6-8 tables.
1) KK v QQ – all in on the flop
2) TT v KQo – blind vs blind, I flopped a Set and he hung himself when it came running Kings.
After that it went a bit pear shaped, lost a big 3-way coup for a $143 pot with KK v JJ v QTs on a AKJ board. Marvellous!
The highlight of the evening was the loon who was 1-tabling but managed to run golden throughout most of the session, he was sitting with about $350 by cracking AA/KK a few times with hands like Q5o where he flopped middle/bottom pair and binked on the turn or river. Amazing luck! I tried my best to get into pots with him but couldn’t get a hand to double up with, I did get JJ but he folded when I raised, instead I went to war with the guy in the BB who 3-bet me pre, I called then tried to push him off on an Axx board but he had top set – oops, not doing that again!
After my session I still kept his table up and decided to go back on, managed to double up with my first dealt hand in the BB.
I was down -$73 after around 500 hands for the night but was not bad for my first $50NL session, looks like I’ll stay on this level until I either go broke from getting outplayed by the regulars or I can make good looking up-hill graphs, I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds after maybe 10K hands at the end of this month which is about 20hrs of 6-8 tables.
I also noticed that there were a lot of $50NL multi-tablers so I presume they are all regulars, many of them were playing between 8-24 tables which was interesting to know, the rest were hidden but they probably multi-table too. I’ve yet to work out who to target, either the players that play 1-2 tables or ones that are playing 12+ who are on auto-pilot mode. I’ve made notes of how many tables they play just in case they go hidden one day, hopefully it’ll help with marginal decisions that either save or make me money.
Tonight I think a mixture of $50NL and tournaments will be a good plan – it’ll be interesting to see if the weekend bunch are softer or not. Hopefully my next post will be a brag of 4-figures over the weekend.
Happy grinding!
Tournaments are designed to ruin you I swear to god! One minute you’re all chipped up and ready for the final table then the next you go out 9th for a soul-crushing experience. Or it could be that it’s been so long since you’ve gotten deep in a tournament that you’re doubting your ability as a player. Fortunately for me, combined with the nit status that I am – I just min-cash to maintain my sanity!
On a serious note, ‘Tournaments’ have owned me for the past 3 years, I can safely say I won’t be quitting my day job to play these anytime soon as the profit margins are well below what I earn. It’s exciting yet depressing to see my friends all winning 4-5 figures every other day, but for me to win a nice 4 figures it is like winning the lottery. The last time I took down a 4 figure win was at the end of November 08 and the most recent was May 09, that’s half a year ago!
The good thing about playing tournament is the fun yet challenging aspect of trying to beat everyone else, it’s a good job I know what it feels like. It is that buzz of winning, we all remember our first win and it’s usually the same when you win over and over again but does this outweigh all those times when you don’t win? I don’t think it ever will, with the high-variance that tournaments are, I think you’re always going to be disappointed unless you win and not everyone wins enough times. My recent 4 figure win didn’t end in a buzz even though I finished 1st, this was because I did a deal so it wasn’t the same, next time I’ll fight to the finish!
I have learnt a lot over the last year or so and I don’t intend to stop, my game has been in a rut for a while and still making mistakes. I need to stop these leaks otherwise I am just losing money that I should be winning, taking edges to gain chips instead of just giving up in the pot.
I’m sure the best way to win big is to play LAG yet I try that and to me it’s just a form of FPS (fancy play syndrome). I tend to go over the top when trying to do outrageous moves where the pros seem to get away with it or lose the least possible chips doing it. My new approach will be to fix my fundamentals out first and that is to play cash games, hopefully iron out a lot of leaks and then be able to take down tournaments with the confidence of playing deep stacked as you would in cash.
I really hope my game turns around and I consistent start winning like the big boys do, surely it can’t be that hard to win from these donks out there!
Headline news is that PokerStars have recently cut their guarantees down, there’s speculation on the 2+2 forums that it may be because they will introduce the X2 soon but I doubt it. It’s more likely because there have been a lot of overlay across their tournaments due to the recession, WSOP and the $30m+ of frozen poker accounts in the US.
This may be good or bad news, it’s good because you have a better chance of winning a big field tournament but bad because when you get there your reward is smaller than usual. PokerStars are in the business of making money so I don’t blame them, was nice to see overlay whilst it was there.
Thanks for reading, there’s more blog updates to follow so stay tuned…
May that important boomswitch be on for you!
Astrophysicists may have got excited with the headline news that read ‘Rare Radio Supernova In Nearby Galaxy Is Nearest Supernova In Five Years’ but for a grinder 5 years is far too long. You see, I am back to grinding cash properly and PokerStars have kindly given the UK Players a chance to reach it super quick!
As a low stakes tournament player I have never reached Silver Star Status (1200 VPPs) but in May I managed to reach 3000 VPPs which normally gives me Gold Star Status. However, the VIP Promotion boosted my status to Platinum (usually 7500 VPPs) and I have been granted an additional 70,000 VPPs so I am only 25,000 VPPs away from Supernova.
If I put enough volume it should take about 3 months which isn’t too bad, it’s very doubtful that I’d reach the first milestone bonus which is at 200,000 VPPs but who knows. I could quickly move up to $50NL and playing 6-8 tables with ease, as I’ve said before – only time will tell.
I’m just grateful to be getting FPPs faster and be able to play the freerolls at the weekends where normally I’d be missing out. There’s also the June Instant Cash Promotion that I am aiming to reach for. 10,000 FPPs gets me $160 which is awesome, I am currently on about 4200 FPPs so I better make a move on because the offer ends at the end of June.
This is another reason I regret not grinding cash sooner, I would have had a mega boost with my VPPs and would probably be closer to another milestone by now. Better late than never hey?!
Good luck all you grinders, whatever targets you aim to complete.
I have been meaning to start one of these for a while now and hopefully it won’t feel like a chore. There are so many things I could write about and over time I’m sure it will all spill over this blog in one form or another.
At least I’m not doing this at the beginning of the year where it would have been on my New Year’s Resolution list, we all know things like that tend to get dropped after a while but I intend to maintain this frequently.
To start things off I will mention that Sunday evening was my first cash session and I felt it was quite good even though I roughly broke even. I installed PokerTracker v2 along with PAHud but it wasn’t used in the session because it was too busy importing all my hands, it would have been useless anyway seeing as I mainly play tournaments. I managed to drop 1 buy-in because I overplayed JJ but across the $25NL 6-8 tables that I had open I was able to claw it back for a 10c loss for the session.
I do regret not sticking with it when I first said I would, it was around September 2007 and at the time I planned to use $2000 (40 buy-ins at $50NL) as my cash bankroll. I started to play $50NL 2-tabling at Royal Card Club on the Microgaming network, deposited $1000 on there via Neteller and started to grind, I was up about $110 but had too many things going on such as playing live tournaments and staying at the Gutshot almost every day. My mistake was not to cash out of there but I had no reason to, who were to know that their money would be stolen by the thieves in charge! Fortunately I only lost half of my cash bankroll but it was still annoying, it could have been a lot worse, I could have been grinding for months and making decent profit for nothing (except for experience).
It’s nice to see others on the EMS forum take cash seriously and have grinded themselves a nice bankroll out of it, guys like LUFCBas, BlackShuck, isomorph, dvd346 etc. The Ring Games section has been quite lively with threads on line-checks etc. Hopefully in a years time I’ll be on $100NL and possibly be on $200NL, only time will tell.
For now, I can only look forward to more sessions whilst increase my knowledge of this type of game and hopefully many winning sessions so that my graph looks good!
Bye for now.
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