16 tabling, all night session & FFS @ min-cashing.

16 tabling:
Since the redeposit of $500 things are going ok, nearly up to $600 after a week of 8 tabling $5 DoNs. I’m a little frustrated that I’m playing the $5 games because I was running around 8% at the $10 games but I have a 100 buyin rule to follow. Even though I am very confident at the $10s experience tells me that all I need is a few bad sessions mixed with the games natural serving of variance and BOOM, money gone! Bugger that, I’d rather play it patient.

I’m now very confident 8 tabling and have decided to take a shot at 16 tabling. Over a year ago I started 4 tabling which to me now seems far to slow. I’m finding myself a few downtime periods while playing which I wouldn’t have though imaginable a year ago “downtime periods whilst playing 8 games at a time” crazy!

I’m going to start this only when the site traffic is at it’s highest as I don’t want to have a scenario where I have half my games at 200/400 and the other half at 25/50. If I can keep them as close as possible that should make those split second decisions a little easier.

Anyone reading this that plays of has played with success at > 8 talbes, please drop me a line, love some feedback. I'll basically have 2 monitors, 4x2 stacked on each other.

Will report with results shortly.

All night session:
The last time I did a all night session I got up at 7:30, went to work until 18:00, got home did the family thing, started playing at 22:00, played through till 7:00, then went back to work until 18:00, then came home, fell over and woke up 14 hours later.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to work today, but I’m still a little delirious. They say server insomnia can be worse than LSD, wonder if that true? (Hold on while I squash that pink elephant…….OK I’m back) I’ve only been up for 31 hours so no need to go to crazy yet.

Anyways, I got in a fair amount of games, but played people I haven’t come across before, probably because I don’t usually play from 2:00-8:00.

Mixed in with my 8 games I also played several MTTs, which leads me to my next subject.

FFS @ Min-Cashing:
Played 5 games, lost the first 4, then started my last one at 5:00. Just under 700 runners paying the top 80. Played the first hour well, expect for one hand that went AIPF 1010 vs KK, no 10 for me. That hand didn’t cripple me but put me back to my starting stack. Start of the second hour just couldn’t get anything going and before I knew it, I was facing the most fucked up question I always seem to face in MTTs, do I crawl and cash or start playing like a maniac?

Like a spineless, gutless, chicken-shit player, I opted to crawl (you know you’ve done it too at some stage!). I had around 2800 with blinds at 200/400/50. I do however; have a very proud accomplishment from this scenario.

I can’t recall the exact numbers but I specifically remember there was a gap of 400 so bear that in mind.

Here what happened.
81 players left, BUBBLE TIME. I was about 5th lowest in chips overall. I was SB with 3000 and BB had 2600. As I was being dealt in I thought to myself, the BB sure as hell doesn’t want to bubble, obvious right! Now if the table folds to me I can shove blind and 1 of 3 things will happen.

1: I’ll pick up the pot, which is like a 50% increase to my entire stack
2: I’ll knock him out bubbling him and doubling up at the same time
3: I’ll lose to him, but still have 400 left and needing to survive 8 hands before I’m blinded all in. I knew even if that happened and I was down to 400, I’m not BB for 8 more hands and knowing these donkaments, some wanker with 20K will unnecessarily go bust.

Suffice to say, I stole his blind. Really was a situation where no matter what cards they were, because of that scenario, I could not lose by shoving. VERY COOL.

So I cashed, yay. However, I’m still bloody short. Before I knew it I was down to top 50 and 1quarter of the chip average. Finally picked up A7o and shoved from late position to be called by monster stack in SB with 66. Cool, at least I’m flipping with my garbage.

Board: K 5 T, J, 9 – you could probably see me jumping after the turn screaming A Q 7!!!!

So yet another min-cash. For all you MTT pros reading this, ffs drop me a line and help me get over this ‘crawl into min-cash mentality’.

So that’s it for onw, I’ve rambled a lot of shit and am dying for some rest, hovever ratsauce89 starts his challenged soon and I have to rail some of that so no more sleep for me right now.

GL all.
Custo

Busto!

I assume the title will bring the readers as everyone is interested to here how online poker players go bust.

Well I am proud to say that it is through no fault of my own. With the arrival of my 4th baby I was left temporarily financially burdened and was forced to draw my entire BR.

It’s just so wired because I started with $1 and built that up to over 3K in less than 2 years now I have nothing. But the money certainly helped, and my family is far more important than poker.

I was given a 30bi steak from my best friend in the, wont say ‘poker community’ even though that’s how we met but luckily the friendship is based on more than poker and for me that went horrible. I kept playing with a fear in the back of my mind saying “if I stuff this up I’m screwing over a mate” and family and friendships are far superior than a game of fucking cards! So after losing like 10bi I called it quits and reimbursed them with apologies.

I’ve been contemplating on what my next move will be and decided I have to rebuild again. Will be depositing $500 shortly and having to go back to the $3.40s. Still using the same BRM system except I’m making it 120/100. 120 buyins to play a limit, if drop to 100, drop down a level. Why these numbers? Because I’m a BR NIT! I will also, if affordable, top up little amounts every now and then from my own pocket (sky rocket for my UK readers :)

So that’s it, it sucks having to drop down in limits so much, but I had no choice. All I can do is suck it up and try to rebuild as fast as I can. At least I know after 2 years of playing with a BRM system I can’t actually go broke, unless I break my own rules, and then it’s just my fault. I’m good enough to make it, just have to start from the bottom again.

But at least I have my family and friends in good health, that’s the main thing.

Custo

Bing Blang Blaow

I just had to have this clip on da blog. Even if you've already seen this a million times....fuck it, watch it agian. LOVE IT, seroius ROFLMFAO.

If Boku87 can do it, does that mean anyone can do it?

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me with the amount of hours and tables this guy is putting in, which is clearly the largest I've ever come across, overall he is always going to be profitable no matter what. He can have 100+BI downswings and still make money in a long run

I assume the following about his gameplay:
Never Bluffs?
Doesn't reference any form of stats or history?
Plays with bankroll guidelines?
Plays the purest form of ABC Poker? IE. Tight nit @ start, then push/fold mode once x amount of bb's left
^^^^^^^Once again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Am I missing something or is his approach/strategy that straight forward?

If it is that straight forward, wouldn't that mean that anybody can do the same, if they were able to match that form of volume?

Your thoughts/feedback?

8 out of 8, twice in the month!

Running good and I put it down to one thing, consistency!

For the first time ever I have stuck to the one thing and haven't deviated. Since September 1 I have been 8 tabling DoN SnGs at Titan. I started to do this for 2 main reason. 1 was to test the waters with 8 tabling and see how comfortable I am with it. The other was to test myself playing exactly the same game every day for a month straight and see if I can stop myself from going insane.

Volume wise I'm proud of what I've done so far. Over 600 games and hanging around a 7% ROI. What's quite odd is that I tried 2 sessions of 10 tabling and felt super uncomfortable, yet I now seem to be able to 8 table with my eyes closed. I can understand doing from 2 tables to 4 tables would be a massive jump, but I didn't expect going from 8 - 10 would make me so uncomfortable. So I'm sticking to 8 for the time being.

I'd love a higher ROI, not sure what professional DoN players can sustain with that volume and at that level, but I've noticed my sharkscope ability go from 61 upto 65 this month, so I figure I must be doing something right.

My proudest achievement this month I've managed to do twice. First time about a week ago and the second last night. I've managed to win 8 out of 8 games at the same time. Sitting just over 600 games I've played around 80 sessions and to have 2 sessions where I'm 8 for 8, I think is freaking awesome. I've had several 7 out of 8s and my lowest has been 2 out of 8 (only 2 of them)

Better back this brag up with some evidence so check out below.


and



^^^^ Here I was mucking around with the $1 games to see what happens to my ROI/ITM, nevertheless 8 wins is hot at any stake.

The other thing I'm loving with 8 tabling is that, I remember specifically during a session I took 2 horrendous beats at the same time on different tables causing me to bubble. 1 hand was my AA vs AKs, opponent hit runner runner for nut flush. Second had was I had QQ vs 99 AIPF and board came Q93 K 9. WTF. But at the time I simply shrugged it off and focused on my remaining 6, of which I won them all. So it's actually teaching me better tilt control. Bad beats are always going to happen to me, it's how I act after that is important. I laughed at those 2 eliminations and still managed to keep a positive result.

So that's it for me so far. I haven't gone insane, and am learning to 8 table very well. Later down the track I'll switch back to regular SnGs to hopefully increase the ROI but for the time being I'm happy to make some guaranteed money.

August 2009 – the month that almost ended my career!

Looking back at August, it almost felt like an out of body experience.

Hindsight opinion: I could have done things so much different.

So what happened?

First real month of deciding to play SnGs exclusively and I got hit with my first BIG taste of negative variance.
I’ve had 10BI downswings before.
I’ve had 12 games ootm in a row.
But I’d never tasted what negative variance can really be like until last month.

I can’t recall the exact figures, which is beside the point to be honest. But I suffered from a 30+BI downswing which shock my world. I was over-rolled for my games which was fine but damn, 30 buy-ins down in the game I love SUCKED.

From there I started single tabling 100NL on Stars and 4 tabling 50NL on Ipoker, trying to convince myself “If I play really really really tight, I shouldn’t run into that much trouble and make back my losses asap, WRONG.

No need to give dollars and cents, but I had a negative 4 figure loss in August.

I really questioned, for the first time in my life, can I do this? Also, do I want to do this? The answer came back to what it always has been, YES!

Looking back I lost the main chunk of money due to not following my own rules and letting my emotions take control of my actions.

In a really weird kind of way, I'm actually happy I lost so much last month. It really taught me that there will be big downswings and there is nothing that can be done about it. Importantly, they will happen again, so be prepared for it. The most shocking part is that there still may be bigger downswings to come!

September 2009.
Having recently gone gold star on Titan I’ve decided to test the waters volume wise and see what I can do. I’m starting to get used to the fact that I need to put in the games and time so I’d like to see how many games I can actually get through in a month.

Since the start of the month I’ve played 160 SnGs for a +9% ROI. A little shocked at that but happy as I’ve never played so many games 8 days into the month.

I’ve moved from 4 tabling to 8 tabling which is working out very nicely. I’m was hoping to play 300 SnGs by the end of the month for at least a 5% ROI, so far the volume is tracking good, hopefully I can attain the good return.

August was a learning curve, yes another one. I lost big then played out of my depths to make it back quickly. Doesn’t work, looks like this will be a slow grind, but one things for sure…..

I will never ever give up and I will become stronger with this!

I had a lot of support following my last post and want to thank everyone on my blog and forums for their help and advice, if no-one wrote back or helped, my results would have been a lot worse, so THANK YOU ALL.

Be back soon with mid monthly updates.

Good luck to all.

Custo.

20 Buy-in downswing in 8 hours, how to deal with it?

What really sucks was I played optimal poker for the first 5 hours, and then tilt took control for the next 3 hours.

How can I play optimal poker and lose 20 BUY-INS IN A SINGLE DAY?

Good question.

I’m not going to entertain you with video replays of the BS hands I went through but here’s an idea, all hands are allin hands…

AK vs AQ – He flops the Q
JJ vs 77 – He flops a 7
AA vs AKs – He runner runners flush
A9 vs A2 – He rivers a 2
Heres one of my favourites for the night……
3 way pot, my AK vs QQ vs A5…..
Board….. A J 2 5 5

You can see where this is going.

I know what your already thinking, took some bad beats, get over it and get on with it. I’m not denying that for 1 second. But 8 hours of this repetitive garbage, seriously wtf?

I’m to seasoned to know PokerStars doesn’t “have it in for me” nor am I going to say that’s it’s all rigged.

What I’m pleading for at this stage is just advice, how the hell do you deal with poker when the cards treat you like that over and over and over again?

I know the swings and variance associated with SnGs and accepted that a long time ago. I’ve just never seen a consistently harsh set of outcomes dealt to me

What to do???????

FYI - this is all on $16 9man turbos at PokerStars