January 2010
Hey all, quick update from me on how January is going so far. As some of you may have seen, i outlined my basic goals for this month towards the end of december, where i finished up playing $2.20 180mans and decided to take up a different focus.
So far ive played 81 $3.25s (6max turbo format); which is averaging about right for my overall goal of 250 games by the end of the month. Here's my graph so far:
Overall its going well; heads-ups can be demoralising though, especially since ive been running below expected in them up until now. You can go in a 7500-1500 favourite vs someone you know for a fact doesnt understand stack depths/nash equilibria/shoving and calling ranges etc... but with high blinds the focus pretty much becomes the cards you are dealt. I feel i play them fine, it just gets tiresome to put in a break even session where a couple of holds heads up like AJ holding vs A6 would put the session into profit.
I think overall im running above expected when it comes to making the HUs; ive had some lucky card dead runs where people have donked off against each other to leave me HU, and i seem to be winning flips and holding invariably up until that stage. But when it gets down to 1-on-1 i'll be card dead and/or sucked out on a lot of the time to finish in 2nd. Its not all bad though, a solid profit so far =)
Ive also turned my attention to the UK&IPL (UK & Ireland Poker League), which runs 3 tournaments per day at different buy-ins: $0.90 + $0.10, 2000 play money and 25 FPPs. Since the 5th ive started religiously entering the first two, since there are monthly leaderboards with cash prizes (I decided not to bother with the FPP one as I'd rather focus on the goodies in the VIP store :P). It's 1 point for participating, 5 for prizing and then 10+ for final table (up to 20 for first place), as well as actual cash/play money prizes in a standard pokerstars structure. At the end of the month points are tallied for the 3 separate "leagues", and the top 100 get a simple cash prize (from $10 up to $300).
It gives me a break frm STTs and allows me to get in a bit of practice with MTT play so i dont get rusty; and i figure it shouldnt be too hard to make the top 100 of the two leaderboards im participating in for a small amount of cash at the end of the month. Ive prized both two nights running now which is a good feeling, especially after turning profits in $3.25s earlier in both days =D
Ive been dabbling in some PLO this month as well... Ive been mixing up 2PL for lols and 10PL for proper practice (6max cash games) with... well, mixed success I guess. Overall I guess im stuck somewhere around $5-10; all was fine til a bad session last night where some FPS kicked in and i had a few suckouts as well. All in all my decision with this has been to drop it for the remainder of the month and to focus on my tournament plan which is going smoothly. Ill finish reading Jeff Hwang's book and think about returning to it sometime later in the year maybe.
So 169 $3.25s to go and 42 more UKPL tournaments... hopefully I'll be in a good spot by the end of the month ^^
Comments
Thanks for the positive comments/feedback 
I might look into 3-tabling then, thanks. I think 3 tables was what i used to do when i did these before; i did around 100 randomly but moved to MTTs... looking back i played around 100 games with $100 made so maybe you're onto something. I definitely mustve run above expected back then, though!
Ive never had it go to 4 HUs at once; ive had where all four have gone HU but at varying rates so the most HUs i normally have had to deal with has been 2 or 3. With exams and stuff looming im not sure whether the 250 will be met or not, but if it looks like ill get there comfortably i might take it down to 3 tables for the last 50 or so and see if i notice a difference.
i dont think i would be too worried about having too many HU as by the time you get there it is surely shove/fold auto pilot. unless people donk off real fast? you are making a good profit so i would say stay at 4 and maybe even add more. its all about $/hr not $/touranment (roi) gj man
That screenshot was taken from PT3; it's all I use and its awesome for tournaments =D
I had to set up a g-mail account to get it to import the tournament histories, though - basically after a session i request tournament histories for my last x games, then tell PT3 to manually import from email and its done =]
Yeah its pretty much auto pilot shove/fold, but you also have to adapt. You cant just apply nash because your opponents won't be playing optimally and you need to adapt to that. If they're minraising every button and you keep giving up on autopilot you'll be shortstacked before you know it, so sometimes you have to make moves on their idiocy.
ehhhhh sort of.
it doesnt work great for cash in that it only shows all-in situations, and furthermore only situations where you are the one who's all in. If youve got $26 at the table, and someone with $25 goes all in with KK vs your AA, if the K flops it wont show you running below EV because it didnt count it as an all-in preflop situation (for some reason).
With SNGs this is even more the case; though i guess i could tinker with it and see what comes up.
A good start Alex. I started on Stars playing these tables. I played over 500 at 0.87 per game playing 3 at a time. I notice you're playing 4 at a time. I found 3 at time was the max I could cope with without seriously negatively affecting my ROI. It was doing about the same as you at 4 at a time. i.e. I actually made slightly more playing 3 than 4. Although you might be able to cope with more than me. I found if I ended up in 4 HUs at the same time I'd meltdown.
Good luck with the remaining 169. Wish I had time to play the UK and Ireland poker league. It sounds interesting.