Poker - First Week of Summer Holiday

I finished exams at school a week ago so I've had a decent amount of time for poker the last week. The last week has gone relatively well, although I've had some pretty serious swings. The week started off pretty well with a few small relatively small wins, and a bigger win or two,  after the first 3-4 days I managed to build up a $750 win after only about 300 games, which wasn't bad. Although last Friday I went on a really bad downswing (about $1000), this downswing was specifically shitty because I managed to lose the majority of it at lower stake games below the $20 stake, it resulted in about a 60 buyin downswing. I didn't play any poker on Saturday although after a night of drinking I decided to play some online roulette which began by going extremely poorly, although it ended up resulting in a $400 win (thank god). The last 3 days I've managed to comeback with a good upswing on the sng tables, winning about $1000 in 185 games.

Total stats for first 7 days of summer:

Games Played =              771
Profit from play =          $493
Profit from bonuses =    $150
Profit from roulette =    $400

Total Profit (7 days) =  $1093

Here's the graph for my last week, my first week of summer

Training Video

So the other day I was talking to another poker player and he had asked me if I had ever made a training video, or done coaching in the past...which I haven't

So i decided to try and make a video just for fun kind of to see if i can get some feedback, or to see if people like my stuff

Unfortunately the quality of the video is very poor, because I had originally recorded the video in the wrong format and when I used an online video format converter it messed up the quality. Hopefully I can get a better video quality next time (if there is a next time)

The video is of me playing 30 Super Turbo SnG's, where I'm a proven winner over a large sample (about 9% ROI)

Here's the video link for youtuve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4pPWfSn9xU

And for those of you who are wondering how my poker has been going lately, heres my graph for my last ~60 days

Mid March Review

This review is for the end of the first half of March (end of March 15)

March has gone pretty well so far, although it has had a $1000 downswing, its had even bigger upswing

My bankroll (that only started at $50 on January 25th) is now big enough to comfortably play the $20 Super turbos, and also play some $40 Super turbos, although there is really enough action at the $40 games and the swings at the $40's are HUGE, and the average ROI at them is probably a lot smaller then at the $20 games

For example:

9% ROI at the $20 games = $1.80/game

5% ROI at the $40 games = $2/game

My volume this month at the games has basically been even between the $10 & $20 games, and I've also played a lot of 20 person $11 games where I've been a HUGE winner (90.7% roi in 81 games)

So basically profit in march so far has been:

SNG/MTT: $2665 in 1360 games

Cash: $350

Profit after all games/other stuff for the last 15 days = $3200

Here's my cash game graph and my tournament graph

Hopefully March continues this well, goodluck on the grind

February Stats

February had its high ups and some pretty strong downs at times but after a boring January it was nice to book a decent win for the month. My bankroll didn't start that high this month so I started off playing mainly $5 games, although my bankroll graduated to being able to play a decent volume at the $20 games. The $20+1 6 max superturbos games did not start that well for me (losing about $400 through my first 150 games), although my winnings at the lower stake games were high enough to let me continue to play the $20 games, which led to a $1000 upswing over my next 200 games, so I'm now a $600 winner over 329 $20 games.
Unfortunately between school exams and other stuff I didn't get to put in the volume that I wanted to this month, although my average ROI was very high at SNGs especially since I've only really been playing SuperTurbos where high winrates before rakeback are very difficult to achieve
March started off poorly, the way that February ended, continuing a downswing, although some of my losses were from playing Roulette online after a few nights of drinking. Basically February ended with a $300 loss, and March started off with a $400 loss, so I was on a $700 downswing, although I've cut most of those losses with a $650 win over the last 2 days without playing that much volume

Here are my stats for February:
Total win = $1255

SNG stats:
Games played:      1542
Profit:                  $1539
Average ROI:      13.3%
Total ROI:           9.3%

SNG graph

Wish me luck for a big win in March, had a $1/game winrate in February I'd love to be able to turn that into a $2/game winrate and continue having an ROI around 10% or higher

February Stats - Updated Feb 17

Last Friday I had a bit of a downswing, which hurt my care to play and stuff plus I had a bunch of exams so I took a few days off

I've got a week off of school now, so there's probably going to be a lot of SNGs played

The last 2 days I've won about $1000, which was a pretty good way to get back on the grind, it was a pretty impressive win considering almost all of the games were between $5-10. I had a session yesterday where I won 42 buyins in like 60 SNG games, literally couldn't lose

So as it stands right now im up about $820 in February, think I'm going to try to start playing more $20 games also hopefully I could run a bit better at them then I have lately

I also just finished an MTT, I don't play them often, but i finished 3/314 in a $4 R/A tourney and I managed to cash for around $357, shitty though because 1st place got around $800 it woulda been a nice win

Here's my tournament graphs for both buyins won, and dollars won. Hopefully I could turn this into atleast a $1500 month hopefully more

Results - First 5 days of February

Well....The first five days have been interesting
I was up $500 for the month by February 2nd, and I've had some pretty big swings so far
Unfortunately I'm only up about $100 or so in February (but whatever its only February 5th I'm still gunna make a bunch this month)

SNG stats:
games played: 435
average ROI: 10.1%
Profit: $250
rakepaid: $250

Cash Game Stats:
Hands Played: 7562
Profit: -$170
All in EV: +25
Rakepaid: 572

Wish me luck for the rest of the month!
Im feeling like just grinding 500 games this weekend in 2 days all at $5-10 hopefully make like $500

January Stats

So, January is over...wasn't the best poker month although towards the end of the month i switched sites and my hope started to rise in hope of a great February of poker (february has started well so far if you're wondering)

In January i played mainly on Titan poker, 1446 games with only a $136 profit even after rakeback, and i messed around at cash games and stuff also..In total I made about $115 on Titan poker

I also messed around at FullTilt a little bit with a $50 deposit, and lost that

Although on January 26 I deposited a bit onto 888 poker, between the 26th of the month and the 31st i won $355 (this could have been a lot higher although I took some shots at higher stake games and didnt fare well at them until yesterday which was February 1st)

All in all -
Titan Poker: +$115
FullTilt       : -$50
888 Poker : +355
Total         = +420

Here are graphs

                                                                    Titan poker january

                                                         888 January - Buyins won

888 January - dollars won

High hopes for a $1500 February, I also have a week off school so hopefully I can kill the games then. Wish me luck.

What is rakeback? The benefits of a good rakeback deal

A shockingly large amount of online poker players (and poker players in general), don't know what rakeback is and they don't understand the benefits that rakeback has to the general poker player who plays casually

When I first started playing online poker on FullTilt in 2010 I didn't know what rakeback was, on FT the standard rakeback deal was 27% rakeback, I had deposited $200 and lost it all over the course of a month of two, but I had payed over $700 in rake to the site, if i had 27% rakeback I would have basically been break even after rakeback.

Now, I understand as well as anyone why a great rakeback deal is necessary for most pokerplayers. I constantly hear people say "I don't want to leave Pokerstars because I enjoy the software and the experience so much". But the reality is, Pokerstars offers most players almost NO rakeback. The single best advice I can give to someone is to play on a smaller poker site, and get a better rakeback deal, you will have a much better overall experience playing online poker this way.

Currently I play on Titan Poker, and I have a good rakeback deal, which I haven't even taken full advantage of.
My rakeback deal currently offers me:
VIP program: 35% rakeback
Constant pending bonus: up to 30% rakeback
SNG/Cash Game Leaderboards: 10% rakeback
Gold Bar Leaderboard(current promotion if you sign up at "iwantmyrakeback.net"): good for 10-15% rakeback
Many months my rakeback could get as high as 80% when i take advantage of promotions that the rakeback site i signed up with has
For example:
Lets say in February 2013 i rake $1000, but lose $100 during play, with 50% rakeback(which might be the minimum) i will still be earning hundreds of dollars

Here is my profit graph on Titan Poker(I've been playing there for 4 months)

as you can see, without a good rakeback deal I would actually be losing a lot. Although with my rakeback deal I have become a decent winner

I had mentioned it before but ill mention it again
I signed up to Titan Poker through
iwantmyrakeback.net
i have also had great rakeback deals with LockPoker from iwantmyrakeback.net

if you have any questions regarding how and where to find good rakeback deals you can add me on skype
Skype: alex.fisher14
or email me at: alex_fisher14@hotmail.com

Also, I can help you get in contact with the managing team for iwantmyrakeback.net

Interesting Session - Play before Site Maintenace

Hey, sorry for not having posted in awhile I've just gotten back to school about a week ago and my time has been all over the place

I had a really interesting session last night that I figured would be worth sharing, plus its kind of some advice to players who play on smaller sites that have site maintenance relatively often

Last night, Titan Poker was having a site maintenance that started at 6am and ran to 7am. I logged on around   1 am and was dissapointed to see that the site had stopped offering most SNGs 5 hours before the site maintenance began...There were less than 100 Tournament tables running opposed to the +500 that they usually have, and they had stopped offering most variations of games

However, they were still offering $5+.30 4max DoNs, although they were only letting 1 game register at a time. So i only played these games and was still able to get enough action to play 9-12 tables at a time, i managed to still get 136 games in about 3.5 hours

What i learnt is that before site maintenance, there are literally NO regs online playing SNGs, probably because they werent able to play the play the games they usually play. And it seemed like all weak SNG players were playing the DoNs...I had never in my life seen weaker play at SNGs than i saw during this 3 hour stretch of play

In my 136 games i managed to win $112 (which is good considering the highest stake i played was $5), and it literally seemed like people were purposely losing and giving away money

My advice to you if you play on a site that has site maintenance once in a while: PLAY POKER BEFORE SITE MAINTENANCE, it is extrememly fish infested

Here is my graph from the session

I intend on getting back into posting as of now, here is also my graph of 2012 so far... I am losing $75 in the games although Im up about $300 after bonus/VIP/rakeback...goals for january are to win +$600 and to break even or profit pre RB

Dec 12 - Grinding out a small win

I should really be doing nothing but studying right now, since my last 2 exams are 2 days from now. But clearly I'm too much of a poker degen so now here I am writing a blog post about my session from this morning (writing the post as a study break).

I generally don't play with a stop-loss, if I do have a stop loss it will be because I busted my roll (lol). But i do find i like to try and grind out a pre RB win when I can. So todays session started by losing like 8-9 games in a row, and they were all $10 buyins. So i was pretty tilted I basically ran terribly and got a bunch of 3rd places just out of the money and stuff. After losing these games I started to play $5 games instead, trying to grind back a win, and when I won a bit at the $5s I'd mix in some more $10 games and stuff, and eventually hacked away at a bit of my losses from those games

Finally, on game #137 i managed to crack the profit point and instantly stopped my session, my goal was to get back to even and i did. Shows how much variance could suck in poker, lose 8 games in a row and then need to grind well for 129 games just to get yourself back to even.

-Ended up winning $2.35 during the session
-Average ROI: 7.7%
-Total ROI     : 0.3%
-Rake Paid: $50.65 (so i ended up being like a $35 winner post RB)

Shortstacking Speed Poker

Kinda got bored/fedup with playing DoNs... as everybody whose played DoNs knows they could be a pretty boring game

Plus i had taken a pretty bad downswing at them so i decided to mix it up a lil bit

Right now I'm a slight winner post RB and stuff, due to my downswing 

I played a few MTTs for fun also

1 night i registered in a $1 R/A tourney with like 70 people in it..i registered for it while i was in bed and figured it just end up playing dumb and tired and bust away my stack in like 15 minutes. I ended up grinding a big chip stack and made it to the final table like 3rd in chips. When there were 5 left i was chipleader with about 90k and average was like 55k, i ended up losing 70k in chips one hand due to a semi bluff on the turn with a flush draw i believe.

First place only got $49.80 which is really little considering i was playing $10-20 DoNs. Yet i managed to end up grinding back a good stack and ended up winning the tournament for the $49.8 lol (so about a 50buyin cash, sure as hell helps my average ROI)

I also got like 50th in a 700 person $5 R/A which was good for like $30....i was about 15th in chips when i busted on a river bluff with a missed flush draw, the guy called me with a pretty weak hand, he was chasing like a K high flush vs my A high flush draw and rivered a K so I figured he would have folded there

But ya, so basically I've decided to give speed poker a shot, you can get a ton of hands in and action is quick and exciting so its been pretty fun...I've been shortstacking because I figured swings wouldnt be as high and Id have more edge, its nice being able to leave the game after doubling up and then instantly rejoin with whatever stack size you want

I had started out at 10NL figuring I havent played cash games in a long time and it might take some getting used to. I wasnt playing terribly at first but i wasnt playing well, my non-showdown winnings were terrible and my blind play was really bad also. Around hand 6000 a friend of mine who only plays cashgames game me some simple advice to helpout my nonshown winnings and my blind play. My first session after the advice I killed it but then kind of pissed away some of my winnings, Ive ran pretty damn bad lately, about 8buyins under EV, which is quite a lot considering i was never really playing deeper than 40-50bb

Heres my graph for total winnings since Ive started playing Speed Poker. Ive been typically playing 6 tables which plays over 1500 hands an hour. My EV is about even which isn't terrible I think, if I maintained an even winrate Id be a pretty big winner post RB and be able to move up in stakes pretty quickly

Some Math behind DoN stategy and -EV plays

Many players who put in volume at the Ipoker 4max DoN games seem to play other games as well, typically 6 max superturbos. I believe that that players playing these other games also makes them lead to becoming much weaker DoN players because the games are so difficult when you look at them from a more in depth mathematical point of view.

The problem with playing DoNs against some weaker opponents is that these opponents can make a lot of plays that are –EV for both of you. Unlike most formats of SNGs, DoN games have a lot of certain plays (all in plays)  that are –EV for both players. I don’t think that many people take this into account enough during their decision making process. The reason for these –EV plays is that the most profit you can get from a DoN game is 2x your original buyin, whereas in a 6max SNG 1^st place typically will get around 4x the original buyin, this allows for more gamble to be profitable, a typical example would be an early stage all in with 1010-QQ vs AK which isn’t really too negative or positive EV for either player

Im going to explain some very standard –EV plays that many DoN players will make.

Many DoN strategies tell a player to play an EXTREMELY tight in the early stages of a game, because you don’t need to build a big stack you just need to still have chips and get into the money. While this is good beginning strategy it is smart to play hands early on where you are more capable of hitting huge flops and getting paid off a bit, an example would be limping suited connectors and low pairs, not only playing AQ-AK and 10s or better the way some beginning strategies will explain. By investing only 1bb which could be as low as 20 chips you get the opportunity to hit a big hand and get paid off, although you shouldn’t be playing every single suited connector and pocket pair you get, you need to play them in moderation to get paid off by the fish.

Also, what I often see is players underplaying hands like AA, KK, QQ early on in a DoN and not being able to let go of them when they probably know they’re behind on a really ugly board. AA and KK should be played relatively aggressively preflop, at 25/50 blinds if someone raises to 175 its not the worst plan to just auto ship KK because too many players cant let go of big starting hands. AA should also be played very aggressively, if theres a raise with a caller or two you can typically just auto ship, yes you’re more likely to win a smaller hand with no showdown – but this isn’t a bad thing because the less  gamble in a DoN the better(that is a key point in becoming a winning DoN player.)

Late stage plays:

A general rule for calling an all in in poker is to think about if you’re getting the right odds. In a DoN this isn’t necessarily the case because you don’t want to gamble. Heres some percentage rules you should think about if you are playing with an average chip stack. My examples are assuming the game starts with 1500 chips each

In a 4max game, if there are 3 players left and the blinds are relatively high there is going to be a lot of players going all in to steal the blinds, if you are an average stack it isn’t profitable to call an all in or a near all in with just greater than a 50% chance of winning, even if you magically knew the players cards and know youre ahead it still might not make sense to call an all in. If you are at chip average with what is now 2000 chips you shouldn’t be calling an all in from a player with an equal stack unless you believe you have greater then a 66.6% chance of winning the hand. I typically try not to call unless I believe I have 70% chance to win or great, an example would be.. I would fold 88 if I believed I was against 2 over cards. But I would call with AK if I was against a weaker A such as AQ. The reason for this is that if you are chip average with 3 players left you are going to get ITM and double your buy in 66% of the time, since 2 of the 3 remaining players (all with chip average in this example) make the money. It is not worth risking your stack to win the game in an all in when you could just focus on blind stealing or hoping that the 2 other players get all in against eachother.

In a 6max DoN game with  4 players left, since 3/4 of the players make the money you shouldn’t be calling all in or near all in with chip average unless you have greater than a 75% chance to win the hand.

That goes the same in a 10max DoN on the bubble. If there are 6 players left, 5/6 of the players will make the money and there is a big chance another player will eventually be able to knock somebody out so you shouldn’t be calling an all in without greater than a 84% chance of winning the hand (so basically in a 10max DoN on the bubble with chip average you shouldn’t be calling an all in without AA or maybe KK, and never really with AK at all.)

This is some simple tips to help your ROI at DoN games, and keep your other SNG games from affecting your DoN strategy.

If there is interest in this strategy post there will be more to come.

Nov 26-28

Put in some decent volume these last 3 days, ran really bad my first 100 games on Monday so the last 3 days i showed a bit of a heavy loss considering i was really just playing the $5 games before, although I've started adding the $20 DoNs to my grind also, as of now I've played 143 $20 DoNs and am profiting pre rakeback from them

Also, the sit win go leaderboard finished on the 28th of the month. And i hadnt even realized i was close to making the leaderboard since my first game played this month was on Nov 22. But, when i checked the leaderboard with 2 hours left before the leaderboard closed i was in 31st place (top 25 get paid), so I figured I'd try and put in a ton of volume in the last 2 hours before the leaderboard closed. I played 130 DoN games in 2 hours, which is definitely the most games I've ever played in such a short period. I managed to get 23rd place which is good for $30 (although it hasnt been deposited to my account yet)

The VIP host last week had also offered me a $60 bonus for hitting 10,000 VIP points in 10 days, i hit it today after only 6 days so I got $60 from that, as well as $50 added to my pending bonus

Heres my HEM graph for Nov 26-28

Games played: 628
Profit: -$206.8
Rake Paid: $391.8

And my graph since my deposit on Nov 22

Bankroll is at $432.96    ($182.96 up since deposit)

I have about $300 in VIP points

And a $30 bonus from leaderboard that's on it way

Up a bit over $500 since deposit one week ago

Background Story On My Online Poker Playing

I'm 19 years old, in my second year of university.
Been playing online poker for a bit over 2 years now
My first 6 months i kind of just casually lost a few hundred dollars
Decided to eventually switch to playing Double or Nothings (DoNs) on Pokerstars, after grinding the lowstakes games for about 3 months i managed to make like 2k
With this 2k i cashed out most of it and deposited $250 on Carbon Poker to attempt to make a good run at the Merge SNG leaderboard
In December 2010 (my first month on Carbon) i finished 3rd on the SNG leaderboard playing 6max Super turbos, the leaderboard cash was good for $1000, in December i had ran my $250 up to $3k and within 3 more months i had turned that into almost 15k, moving up from the $5 games up to the $35-100 games in like 4 months. This 15k also included about 2k more profit on Pokerstars playing the $50 DoNs
After Black Friday poker began to be up and down over the next 12 months nothing much really happend. I had some micro stake isildur1 like swings and had terrible bankroll management and did some crazy stuff
In January 2012 i won like $2000 on 888poker playing SuperTurbos and cashed most of it out

April 2012 i had one of the most epic 2 days of my poker career. I had $30 left in an 888 account and decided I'd just try and make as much as possible
I played the "Push or Fold" games on 888 which are games which start with 5bb maximum buyin. I started playing 3 tables of $1/$2 (with a buyin of $10). Within like 8 hours of grinding i had ran that $30 up to over $3000 and was playing ($5/10 and some $10/20), eventually i needed to sleep ofcourse. In this one night session i had ran $30 up to almost $3500, i cashed out $500 and went to bed.
The next morning i started playing again (back at $5/10 with is way under bankrolled when you only have $3000), in the next 10 hours i busted my roll.....$30 to $3500 and then back to $0 in basically 48 hours

The last 6 months ive done some grinding on pokerstars, some on ipoker (running up big rolls and busting big rolls also with poor BR management), and some on 888.

Now, depositing $250 on Ipoker I'm going to attempt to do some better bankroll management, with like 50 buyins minimum and dropping down in stakes if im losing, although good bankroll management would probably be around 100-250 buyins

Wish me luck and lets hope I'm grinding the $50 DoNs with a $10k roll as soon as possible

Enjoy the blog

November 24-25 - Solid Weekend

Did some damage at the games the weekend of Nov 24-25
Had an average buyin on $7.32 so in only 159 games its not like you can win a fortune
But i basically played a couple of sessions around 1 hour each
No major downswings and a pretty good looking graph for the weekend

I've doubled my original $250 roll now, up to $523.67 in 594 games (made $55 from deposit bonus)
As well as the money from the tables I've also accumulated about  $100 worth of Titan Points bringing my total profits up to $350ish in 14.9 hours so I've made about $23.5 an hour, with an average buyin of only $7.11

Weekend stats:
159 games
+$177
15.2% ROI
19.8 buyins won
$72 rake paid

Along with my graph since the start (total of 4 days playing)

Nov 23 Session

Nov 23 Session

Lost $13.50 in 225 games, but payed over $100 in rake, so i guess it wasnt that terrible aha, would have preffered a win

Lost $45.1 in MTTs
Won $31.6 in SNGS

Was a 5.8 hour session

First Session - Nov 22

First session since the deposit
210 games played
5.0 hours
+$61.85

Not the worst first session in the world

Back on Ipoker

Hey
I used to play SuperTurbos on Ipoker under the username 'HenriYokinen' and made my account about 3 months ago, but only played there for 1 month
My first deposit was only $100 and i ran that $100 up to like $4k in less than 2 weeks
After that it was kinda completely all over the place
I ended up withdrawing everything at the end of september, it was about $2200 so like $2100 profit from my $100 deposit

I achieved Titan Pokers top VIP level and was offered a reload bonus as well as another bonus, so i figured lets give this site a shot again with another small deposit

On Nov 21 i deposited $250, gunna grind mainly the $5 games to start off, hopefully i could get back to a proper roll for the $20 games and eventually the $50 games

I figure a blog might be a decent way to keep motivated