The Party and SNG Turbo Bankroll Management

This should have probably been broken into two seperate posts, but I wanted to briefly mention the party I had before I forgot.  So that will be Part I and my horrible poker session tonight will be Part II.

Part I (Party):

Before I forget the party Saturday was very fun, a complete massacre.  I wanted to have a party like that since I’m not sure when or if I will be able to do something like that again.  I guess I could just show up to a friend’s house and throw a huge party, but it’s not completely the same. 

I think at one point I woke up at 3:30 a.m and I was passed out on the floor NEXT to my bed.  I remember thinking: “why the hell didn’t I just crash on the bed?”  It’s anyone’s guess as to what the hell was going through my mind on that one.  My best guess is something along the lines of “I’m going to see what’s in this mini-fridge.  NO wait I don’t feel like it, I need a friggin nap.”  Then an hour later I just happened to wake up.  I also still have enough left-over jungle juice in the fridge to kill a full grown elephant.

The girl who lives 3 hours away didn’t come (shocker!), but we exchanged texts all weekend.  The one I remember most from her was:  “I really wish you lived closer by…….”.  I think she really likes me, which is fitting.  The one I really dig would live 3 hours away and actually like me as well!  Absolutely hilarious, it can never be easy right?  I also told her I would ship some jungle juice, and she agreed that would probably be the coolest thing she had ever received in the mail.  Lol!

Part 2 (BRM for turbo SNG's and my shit session tonight):

As for poker I decided to play a few 180 $12 SNG turbo’s tonight.  After the success over the weekend I really want to get a larger sample size playing 180s, especially with my confidence level so high.  I looked around a few blogs and complied some research regarding bankroll management for turbo SNG’s.  I found a lot of different suggestions, but I ended up settling on a hybrid of Ferguson’s basic bankroll management. 

In his basic bankroll management guidelines he suggests only using a maximum of 5% of your bankroll at any given time when playing a cash or SNG games.  This makes no mention of specifically 180 person turbo SNGs.  However, he goes on to recommend only playing a maximum of 2% of your roll when playing a MTT.  Therefore, if I treat the 180 SNG like a MTT playing 2% of my roll would be a very conservative strategy.  I don’t consider a 180 SNG turbo to be purely an MTT, but it surely has greater variance than your typical SNG.

This leads me to believe I would be safe playing 3% of my online bankroll in SNG turbo 180s at once (since they aren’t pure MTTs I upped a percentage point).

2% of my $3,053 bankroll would equal $61.06.  This is somehow only $1.06 off from the amount I would have played tonight without doing any SNG bankroll management research (five 180 turbo games @ $12+$12+$12+$12+$12).  So the brief calculation cross referenced with some of Ferguson’s guidelines assures me that I’m not being completely stupid.  I guess I should just blindly charge ahead without doing any research from now on.

But seriously, while I’m playing around with this BRM strategy I still realize I’m certainly not as good as Chris Ferguson.  Also, last time I was playing Saturday afternoon, which I’m guessing is one of the most profitable times to play.  So maybe I’m not being as safe as I thought.

I just finished playing.  I didn’t place in the first 5.  So I decided to act like that never happened and play 5 more $12 180 SNG turbos .  I somehow lost them all.  Not sure how the fuck you get unlucky enough to bust in 10 of these straight without a place, but whatever.  The all-ins I saw people snap calling with were pretty hilarious, I guess you can’t get bent out of shape when you bust out of 10 tournaments when you’re all in with the best hand 80% of the time.  I’m not going to play 5 more tonight.  Decided to keep a “normal” schedule tomorrow and force a gym session after work.  Maybe I can fit 5 in tomorrow night, they don’t take very long.     

I really actually planned this session out and was quite prepared, so it was extremely disappointing.  I ate a solid dinner, crushed a nap after work, showered, took care of all of my obligations, and felt in a very good mindset to play. 

I still don’t think 10 180 SNG turbo games represent any sort of realistic sample size.  I’m just not used to losing ANYTHING 10 times in a row like that.  I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up on 180s just yet.  But two more sessions like that would obviously make me wonder.  Even if I lost 30 in a row straight I would still be up on the SNGs from over the weekend.  But you have to be careful because it’s possible to lose 30 in a row in 8 hours.

Down $120 tonight =joy.

-bag

Unexpected Win and A Tale of Greed

I have an hour left at work until I can escape for 16 hours, at least in a relative sense.  I just over-heard my boss have a conversation with a co-worker next to me that sort-of annoyed me so what better time to throw in a post? 

Saturday I decided to cram in a few hours of online poker before my party.  I didn’t have much time so I jumped into 5 sit-and-go tournaments total around 3:30 p.m.  4 of the tournaments were $12 120-man SNGs, and 1 tournament was an $11 120 man regular SNG.  Not sure why I decided to make one of them non-turbo, sort of random there.

Had a great payout as I placed first in one of the $12 turbos.  This email confirmation was pretty incredible:

"You finished the tournament in 1st place. A USD 594.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account."

This may not be a lot of money for most, but this is a huge win for me online.  I only a $2450 bankroll on PokerStars.  When I logged out for the day I had profited over $500 net with the first place win, putting my bankroll at $3,053.  I played well, but I’m not going to pretend there isn’t a massive amount of luck involved with any turbo SNG, and that I’m so incredible that my skill made any concept of luck irrelevant.  Hell I consider myself lucky if my AA all in preflop holds against 44.  I mean you have to be LUCKY NOT to get sucked out during these tournaments, even if you are a huge favorite every-time you get all of your chips in.

What I can say is that overall I was very pleased with my play; especially once it was down to the final 15.  I was not scared money, I was playing to win, not bubble out.  I also felt I would not have placed 1^st in the event without my heads-up research and SNG sessions played during the past few months.  I started steam-rolling once it got down to the final 4 players.

I also vividly remember an interaction with my final opponent that was a short tale of greed in my book.  Keep in mind that placing first is worth about $200 more than finishing second.  At one point there were just 2 players left in the tournament (including myself).  With a 2 to 1 chip lead I asked my opponent:

“Hey, would you like me to call an admin?  I would be willing to make a 60-40 deal”

He replied:

“NO”

The next hand I pushed his blind all-in with A-10.  He snap called with A-5.  The A-10 held up and I won.  I couldn’t help but type:

“Your loss”

So he lost himself about $80 by not making a deal.  Once I get to a certain point in a tournament I think it is wise to make a deal.  Considering I only put $12 into this thing and there was an enormous difference between 1st and 2nd place.  I would be happy eliminating luck as much as possible at this point and taking away about $510.  That’s 42 times my entry fee, not a bad day.  Meanwhile, a first place finish with no deal made would win 49 times the entry fee (not much more).  If I played it out and finished 2^nd I would have received only 33 times the entry fee.

Furthermore, the 16X difference for finishing 2^nd is enormous compared to a mere 7X difference if I made a 60/40 deal.  I thought my opponent would also be getting great value here considering he only had about a THIRD of the remaining chips, but he must have had a drastically different take on this.

At my bullshit corporate job it would take me about 40 hours to clear just over $500 (considering taxes), and here I am pulling in a $582 profit at the conclusion of a 2-hour tournament.  The draws of poker are nearly impossible for me to ignore. 

I don’t have the sample size to determine if it is feasible to play mostly SNG turbos and make a profit consistently enough.  The variance is ridiculous, but then again the players are far worse.  I have a feeling there are people out there who have made a steady income stream on a month-to-month basis playing turbos, but I think you might be living a pretty stressful existence if your livelihood depends on winning SNG turbos.

If anyone has any feedback here please comment?

However, if you play online poker I think it is important to mix it up and take chances in moderation.  I really don’t see a problem with taking a small percentage of your cash game winnings to play some turbos (if you are in fact winning your cash games and a solid tournament player).  The turbo SNG sessions were not a huge financial risk on my part, but I normally wouldn’t invest much money into turbo SNG tournaments due to the variance and luck involved.  I was just pressed for time and wanted to get in some good poker.  I figured even if I busted all the tournaments I would have only been down -$59, and I could live with that. 

I didn’t place in the other 3 $12 turbos.  In the $11 180-man regular I finished 16^th, but it was a very small profit margin.

I’m going to cut this post off now.  I was going to discuss the party I had and moving home, but that will be broken up into a separate posts at a later time.

Starting Bankroll:  $2,507

Ending Bankroll:  $3,053

Net Profit:  +$546

Man maybe I should consider playing another session with 5 $12 180-man SNG turbos.  Strike while I’m hot right?

Cheers,

-bag

PokerStars 50NL 12/2/09 (Cash vs Heads-Up)

Last night was pretty productive.  I got in a great workout and a solid poker session at night.  I started off 4-6 tabling 50 NL.  At one point during the night I was down about $115.  I ran pretty atrocious at some points, typical raping by the ways of 2 outers and such.  The low limits on PokerStars seem barely profitable.  I mean you really have to pay attention to your table selection at all times.  The low-limit cash full-ring game play on that site has to be the tightest in poker’s history of existence.  Sure you are going to have really tight games more and more, but you shouldn’t have to sift through tables almost an hour.  On PokerStars not only do you have to worry about getting sucked out, but there’s a good chance even if you get dealt a monster you are going to only win the blinds.  You really have to stay focused, try to not get pissed off, and keep up with your table selection.  Tough to do when you are already pretty damn exhausted.

After a while I started playing 50NL head’s up at the same time.  I think heads-up is really the way to go if you’re going to play a cash game for money low-limit on Stars.  I’ve just been getting into heads-up more the past few months, but I really enjoy it.  It’s a great change of pace from ring game or even 6-max.  I prefer a sit-and-go heads up format, but the problem is you don’t receive any FPPs unless you play with straight-up cash.

Last night (or a few hours ago) I eventually ditched the ring games, and transitioned into playing just one 50NL HU table with an opponent I played with about 2 hours.  He really had my number at first.  I was actually somewhat confused on an attack plan.  Basically he would raise my blind 95% of the time, and usually follow up huge.  When I raised pre and followed up, he would often unleash a massive 3 bet.  This guy ate aggression for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  He invented his own liquid RAGE, which he injects into his bloodstream before he plays online poker.  This mother fucker did not let up, EVER.  The problem was he raised my blind $3-4.50 every-time.  It’s not fun having to pay 8 TIMES the blind to even see a flop.

He made some really questionable plays with mid pair and such, so I felt like discipline could beat him eventually.  He had the aggression down, but I felt he didn’t have a great concept of what a solid hand to put up a massive amount of chips with would be.  My suspicions were confirmed as I became border-line fed-up and pushed all in over the top preflop with A9 making it $15 more for him to play.  He called with K7.  I somehow held on and won that pot.  So after that I felt I could just push all in preflop with nearly any ace and he would stupidly call while having the worst of the situation.

The plan soon back-fired as I pushed all in $35 preflop with 10-10.  He thought about it a long time and called with J-J absolutely crushing me.  I’m not sure what the hell he was thinking about, but he got my number there.  I soon re-bought $40.  During the next big hand I went all in for about $35 preflop with AQ, he called with 77 (he snap called it here.  So he thought about a $35 call preflop with JJ until the time bank ran out, but with 77 he SNAP CALLS.  Maybe it was because he was already up at this point).  Well luckily I spiked an ace on the flop and doubled up there.  I realized my strategy really wasn’t giving myself a substantial edge.

From that point on I shifted strategy and never let him bully me again.  I would fold 6 times in a row if I had to.  I simply wasn’t going to put up $4.50 preflop on my blind with hands like A 3, and I wasn’t going to push it all in either.  I was content playing my game, not his.  I started playing only bigger hands (A9+).  I felt fine doing this since I realized with any hand he basically proved he would CALL my preflop raise, and unleash a massive 3 bet on my follow up.  An interesting trend soon developed; he would continue the aggression train and get himself in huge trouble.  His steals were not balancing out the enormous pots he would eventually lose, not even close.  I doubled up once when I flopped a set.  He turned a top pair 9 and tried to drive out huge getting smashed.  Another hand I took a full buy in when I top paired ace and out-kicked him for a huge pot.  I soon doubled up again, as I realized this guy was completely fine putting up $20 total to fight, even with AIR on the flop or turn. 

He kept re-buying and I took further control.  I won over 3 full $50 buy-ins from him.  At the end I had about $220 in front of me, and he had $0.  I would have played until he left regardless of the fact that it was 2:30a.m and I had to be at work at 9a.m this morning.  I knew my advantage over him was enormous at this point.  I wanted to keep pounding him, like I would do too this 20-year old I invited to my moving away party this weekend (I don’t care if she’s 20, mother of god she is cute), but he left and I logged soon after that.  On the session I was up $50 total, which I was really happy with since I was stuck $120 at one point.

There are a lot of regulars on the heads-up scene, but all it takes is the one right person heads-up to make ridiculous profit margins on low-stakes.  My opponent last night really wasn’t that bad, (I’ve seen much worse heads-up) he had the aggression part down which I feel is usually the most important starting heads up concept.  However, he just had no discipline or even worse really didn’t understand hand values incredibly well.  Crazy aggression works great in no-limit heads-up, but you have to know when the hell to back off. 

In a full-ring game, you are going to find targets even on a super tight site, but you have to deal with 7 other opponents.  Chances are he’s going to quickly leave after he busts to some stupid rock/nit player who happened to find a monster hand at the right time. 

However, in the world of heads-up the weak really don’t have anywhere to hide.

I’ll be so tired tonight that I won’t be able to do much productive, certainly not play poker well.  I have to prepare for big party Friday, but won’t have time to go out.  So hopefully I can get in an online session later Friday before my Saturday massacre.

On the “corporate” front I have a pretty cool new strategy.  Whenever something happens that really pisses me off I don’t do anything work related for an hour.  I use the hour to either apply for jobs in Vegas, write a blog entry like now, (this entry is approaching 2 hours, since I’ve been pissed off twice today so that works out well) or do something fun.

Neat right?

-bag