Up and Down

So it's been a while since I've last posted and thats manily due to my lack of production. I've continued to paly the smaller buy-in tourneys with a little single/double table .25/.50 every now and then. I wish I had something good to post but I can't get over that f'ing hump and grasp a legit score!

In the past few days I have logged somewhere close to 40 tourneys with the following results. 5 cashes and 2 final tables (both in $4 180 man SNG...8th & 4th). I know these lower buy-in tourneys are such crap shoots sometimes but I seem I should have better stats than that and I will in the coming month. As of now my bankroll is sitting at $450 and my goal for July is to see if I can double it and make the move towards 1K.

My tourney stats for the month of June...

2007 June Prizes Profit ROI ABI ITM ITM%
Hold'em $1241 <$0 -12% $16 21/88 24%

I love to hate tourneys....

So I took a few days off after losing big the other night for 2 main reasons...one so I could cool down and get a clear head and not just donk off the rest of my bank roll and two, because I just wasn't in the mood to play. I'm an advocate of only playing when you truly want to so anytime I have a lack of focus or passion I just take some time off and try to analyze the past few days...poker wise.

Yesterday I decided to dive into some tourney play and had some success in the deeper stacked tourneys as usual. I think overall I played 5 tourneys, cashed in 2 for a profit of just over $20, but had some unlucky situations like always. In the three $4 180 SNG's I just couldn't avoid the bad beats losing with the following hands...

1) Kings to Q8off when I was called down on a board of Q 3 7 5, and the lucky donk hit his trips on the river when another Q fell. gg me.
2) Right after the first break in another I got it all in on what looked to be a squeeze by me with QQ and got called in both spots and was ahead of AJ and 44. The flop was harmless but the turn brought an ace and I was done for. gg me.
3) I think we were in the 4th level and I was sitting w/ around 17 bb's when I was dealt AK in one of the blinds. It was raised in front of me so I naturally re-raise and get pushed on. I call and my opponent flips AQ...NICE! Flop an ace...nothing on the turn...river queen. gg me.
4) This tourney I just got unlucky when my queens ran into aces.

All of these tourneys were nothing though compared to my deep stints in the 15K guaranteed and the $3 rebuy. Coincidentally, both of these tourneys have deep stack structures which I feel gives me an edge. In the 15K I was just a force all the time and basically chip up in every round...no real huge hands only the one I busted with, which was my A10 vs. 55. I was getting blinded away and had to make a move and my hand went unimproved and I finished in 142 out of like 2400 players. In the $3 rebuy I had a monster stack the majority of the time. After the first break I was sitting with my usual 8 - 10K in chips and ran with it. I made the right plays when I needed to and only got the chips in the middle when I was in dominating positions. I think it was right around the money bubble when I made my real move and doubled up with a KJ vs. 77. From that point on I went from just around 40K to 500K in about 35 hands and was sitting in 5th place with less than60 players left. I got a bit pf a cold deck and decided I wasn't going to let myself lose this monster stack so I continued to raise it up trying to pick up blinds and antes. I got caught twice and lost some chips and ended up getting it all with fours vs. jacks and busted in 32 place :(. It was a good run considering there where somewhere close to 3,000 people in this tourney. I played good poker and got to work a lot on 3 betting players late in the tourney who I felt were weak. It worked 100% of the time and that more than anything was the reason for the majority of my chips.

I continue to play well in tournaments and put myself in positions to make big scores but come up short. I've said it before and I'll say it again...with the way I'm playing right now I wouldn't be surprised if I score huge here in the next month. I'll continue to play these lower stakes tourneys and hopefully in the near future I will be reporting something great!

Check This Out!

These are my stats before the my horrid session...

game_level	total sessions	Winning Sess.	$ Won	Hands	Hours	BB/Hr.	BB/100	VP$IP	Ayg. Pot	AP	ASF
NL ($0.50) (6 max)	18	12 (66.67%)	$388.85	2853	25.35	15.3393	13.6295	19.6986	6.2008	5.3551	24.8658

And then my stats after the session...

game level	total sessions	winning sess.	$ won	Hands	Hours	BB/Hr.	BB/100	VP$IP	Avg. Pot	AP	ASF
NL ($0.50) (6 max)	24	13 (54.17%)	-3.75	4842	43.9	-0.0854	-0.0774	19.3515	6.6064	5.3137	25.7375

Make up your mind....

So in the past few years I've gone back and forth between cash games and tournament play and had little success in both but never really enough to keep me locked into just one. With the recent lack of quality finishes in tourneys I figured it might be benificial to give cash games a shot to clear my mind of the methadical tourney play. With my bank roll sitting around $500 I figured .25/.50 would be the right limit for me to jump into. I began six tabling this limit in 1000 hand sessions which would take a little over an hour. Things looked to be going great in the first few session, winning 2 and 3 buy-in's each session. The play at this limit is pretty atrocious and I was able to exploit this inexperience with ease.

I though all was going well and that I was about to hit the 1K mark with my bankroll until last night happened! I was again 6 tabling the .25/.50 and about 400 hands in having an average session...nothing crazy happening and chiping up at each table. I think the point when all hell started to break loose was when this hand occured. To preface my play at this table, something I'm really trying to work on while playing these lower limits is opening up my aggression while in position. This meaning winding my range when opening the pot and also widing my re-raise range as well(in position). So it's folded around to me on the button and I raise it up 4x with QQ
and get re-raised by a maniac playing 57/22/5 in the BB. There was very little doubt in my mind that I was behind so I decide to take a flop and take it from there. The flop comes 6 3 9 rainbow, and he checks to me...I lead for 3/4 the pot and he raises me 3x more(at the begining of the hand we were both playing 200bb's deep) and I push and he insta calls with AKoff and spiked a ace on the river(fuck you Greenstein) to ship him the pot. From there it really was bad beat after bad beat. There were a few miss steps here and there on my behalf, but I wasn't getting out of line and simply put, wasn't getting paid when I made hands!

When the 2,000 hand session was done I was down 6 buy in's and my bank roll was back to where it had begun...right around $450. The crazy thing about last nights debacle of a session was 80% of my losses were on one table. I couldn't leave either, because the player who had all the money was the donk. He deffinetly had my number and beat me in most pots with inferior hands! It was so frustrating!

I track all of my cash game sessions in poker tracker so I'll be able to post some stats here when I'm back on my laptop. I think for the most part, through roughly 3,500 hands I was up $412 with a win rate of 17bb's per hundred hands. This was looking great until this past session and now I think I'm hoovering around even, and maybe in the red a bit.

With my roll back down to almost nothing I really don't know what I want to do? I know I can crush the .25/.50 short handed games, I just had a rough night last night. The only thing is, I can't afford another session like this past one or I'll be googling "how to tie a noose". I think what I might do is grind out the $4 180 mand SNG's for a while and try to get my roll back around 1k and then go from there.

Poker Sucks Sometimes

Played a few tourneys tonight and did not run well. In the $30/5K guaranteed I got into a hand when I was holding JJ in the BB and a player in early position moved all in for $1038 and it was called right behind him. I was about 100% sure I was ahead of the callers range and so I pushed on top and he called right away w/ AQoff and spiked a queen :(. I then took some horrible beats in the re-buy hour of the $5 re-buy and donked off my stack about 5 min after the first break. After all was said and done I played 4 tourneys and had nothing to show for it. Tonight was a bad display of poker on my behalf mixed with some bad luck. I feel when these night occur you need to just walk away and cool off so not to do something stupid like go play a $300 SNG or something. I might come back in a few hours and hit up the $8 re-buy but we'll see.

Getting Close...

So in the past 3 days I've made it to 2 big FT's and taken some horrid beats to bust out in 9th and 8th. The first tourney was a $10 freezeout that attracted 601 players and and had a prize pool of just over 6K w/ 1st taking $1400. I went into the FT with an average stack and told myself going in that I wasn't going to sit around and wait for hands but rather play a LAG style and exploit any small edges I thought I had. Well my game plan worked exactly how I planned and after a few re-steals and maybe 35 hands in I got the donkey at the table to call my all in w/ an A6off vs. my AKdd. This was a huge pot at the time and would have locked down second place for me except for the 6 that spiked on the river. That was quite a depressing card and even more my profit on the tourney was a minuscule $120.

So then just last night I played in the $5 re-buy that starts of 4:15am and was having a great tourney. The re-buy period wasn't all that exciting and after the break I was sitting with 6K in chips and was in for $25. In these re-buy tourneys I feel I have such an advantage over most other players due to stack sizes and their inability to stay away from the unnecessary large pots early. Coming off the first hour most players are sitting 40 - 125 bb's deep which is a shit load of chips relative to the blinds. I feel that most players don't understand this concept and instead feel that they on any given hand all their chips have to be in the middle. Anyways, I'll quit ranting and get back to the big hands of the tourney.

Early in the second hour sitting with roughly 7K in chips I limp 22 from early position for $100 and it folds around to the BB who pumps it up to $300. This is a no-brainier call given the stack sizes and also know that if I hit I can bust him. The flop comes 2Q7 and I check it to him and he bets $450 into $750...I minraise w/ my set and in true donkey form he moves all in for another 4K. I call and the turn and river come Q Q to ship him the pot with a higher boat :(. This was a tough hand and it dropped me down to 3.5K, but not 4 hands later I pick up aces and double back up to around 8K. From here I play some solid poker and chip up relative to the average stack and make the money which was at 27 players.

Once we were in the money I turned it on and pick up some key hands at key times. We got down to 11 players and I was now still sitting with 70K or so and needed to make a move seeing as the blinds are at 3K/6K. At my table we were playing 6 handed when this hand came up...I was in the sb with AJoff when it was folded around to the button who is a known tourney monster who pushed for 60K'ish and I was now put to a decision. My rational here is that being a well known profitable tourney player I know that his pushing range here given his stack and the blinds is so wide that AJoff kills his range. I call and he flips QJoff and I win and 175K pot moving me to 5th place now on the final table bubble. not 5 hands later it is limped from the chip leader and folded to me in the sb w/ 92off. This guy had been limping a lot so I decided to take a stab at the pot and raise it to 30K. Well the BB calls, scaring the shit out of me and the limper folds. I put the caller range on AK, AQ, and any pp given the way he's been playing, all I could do is hope for a monster flop and I got it with a 9 2 10 board! There was about 85K in the pot and I was sitting with 120K behind and figured that on a rag flop like this a push might induce a call from a lot of hands (smaller pp's and maybe even AK), so I push and he insta-calls with QQ. I was in the lead but the turn and river brought an 8 and a J for his one card straight. Lucky for me someone at the other table had busted so I got 9th place money, but the pot I had just lost horribly would have put me in 2nd entering the FT. Oh yeah and first place nabbed $1600 :(.

Welcome

Ok, so I want to start this blog to track how I'm running in tournament play. I'm currently playing on poker stars under the alias "tortuga0981" and try to keep my play limited to buy-ins between $4 and $10 with the occasional $20 or $30 tournament if I'm feeling saucy. Here are my stats so far this year...

Game Type Hold'em NL Hold'em L/PL Omaha Omaha Hi lo Other Games

Prizes $7,647 $0 $0 $0 $58 $7,705

Profit $2,924 <$0 <$0 <$0 $27 $2,834

ROI 62% -104% -100% -109% 88% 58%

ABI $17 $8 $13 $6 $8 $17

ITM 21% 0% 0% 0% 25% 20%

They are so so, but could be a lot better. I had a big win in March that netted me close to $2500, so that was a good day. Since then I have been off and on with FT's here and there but nothing really to show for it. I think since that March win I've been back to 4 big FT's w/ an average place of 7th, so I think we know what I need to work on....closing the tourneys out!

I want this blog to serve as a time line for whats to come. I honestly feel like I've figured out this online poker tournament strategy, and it's just a matter of time before I hit something big and take off. Of recently I've had a bankroll of roughly 5K, but took a trip to Europe which depleted the majority of it. I'm currently sitting with around $500 in my account and want to see it rise back to that 5K within the next 3 months. I know it's possible and I know it will happen, so hopefully this blog will capture it all and become some good reading for others to latch on to.