A Milestone 3 Years in the Making

I started playing poker 3 years ago with the view to one day being able to cash out regularly and give myself a weekly wage of sorts. Back then my goal was to be a 5/10 regular with a 60K bankroll before I started cashing out. Last December I hit that goal but nevertheless decided to persevere on and try to be a 5/10-10/20 regular with a 120K bankroll before cashing out.

Now, just two months later, I’ve made it.

Granted, I cheated a little bit with a huge tournament score to help me along the way but still, it feels awesome. It happened a few days ago after I had booked a nice winning session and decided to tally up my various accounts to see where my roll was at. I had expected to be around the 115K mark, but after counting, I stared at the beautiful figure of $121,346.85! I immediately cashed out $1,346.85 straight into my bank account and revelled in the fact that I had finally done what I had wanted to do for so long – a cash out made not out of necessity, but merely because I had more money than I needed online! Now I can play knowing that every dollar I make will be one more dollar in my bank account, not merely another dollar towards building my bankroll. I know that might sound like a petty difference, but for me it’s really exciting.

Anyway the end of February was good to me and I actually stopped playing a couple of days ago once I hit the 20K mark. Uni restarts next Monday so I thought it’d be wise to take these last five or so days off and just relax a bit (relax from online poker that is, there’s a live $500 six-max tournament that I want to play this Sunday if I feel up to it). Here’s my graph and results for February, by far one of my most swingy months ever.

I’m now up about $75K for the year, $22K from cash games and $53K from tournaments. This puts me well on the way to making my goal of $200K for the year, but with uni around the corner and freak tournament finishes unlikely to repeat themselves, I’ll probably find myself just at par in the pretty near future.

I’ve been thinking more about my game recently trying to work out ways to better compete in the tough 5/10 and 10/20 games. The first thing I’ve decided to do is to try playing without a HUD, something that many top pros recommend as it really forces you to concentrate on your opponents and their tendencies. My game certainly made drastic improvements last year when I cut down my HUD from 10+ stats to just 3 and I started watching my opponents more. In recent times though I’ve noticed that I’ve become lax again and started multi-tabling loads and playing almost on auto-pilot. I think the reason for this is that I realised that I simply didn’t need to pay full attention to beat the 3/6 games anymore, something which wasn’t true six months ago. Hopefully by playing without a HUD and by dropping 3/6 from my roster altogether I’ll be forced to continue improving and I won’t develop bad habits or stagnate as a player. It would be all too easy for me to just keep playing 3/6 forever and win there without ever stepping outside my comfort zone (and I know a lot of people do this and to be honest it’s perfectly fine; once you reach 3/6 the money is after all very good), but I really want to one day beat 10/20 with the same ease as I beat 3/6, so I really think that this is the best course of action, even if it does mean challenging myself a bit more than I’d like in the short term.

The second thing that I’ve been thinking about doing is getting some coaching. I looked into it a little bit last year and it was mind-boggling to see just how many people are involved in coaching in some way, either as a student or as a coach. I was particularly surprised to see that a lot of the second-tier DC instructors were coached at one stage or another by the top-tier DC instructors. For some reason I had always assumed that every instructor was just a genius poker player in their own right but it seems that even the top players got coaching! At the moment I’m not sure whether to choose a poker ‘superstar’, someone like whitelime or aejones, or someone who is more familiar with the games that I play, someone like iRock in particular. I’ll definitely think about it more in the coming days.

And last, but not least, I’ve decided to renew my subscriptions to DC and Leggo and to sign up to BFP. I got really lazy with watching videos towards the end of last year and decided not to renew DC when it expired in December since I had this huge backlog of videos to watch and I was away for virtually all of January anyway. Now that everything’s back to normal again though I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep up to date with videos and stay ahead of the game so to speak.

Anyway, that’s another good month in the books! Let’s hope the rest of the year brings more of the same.

My First Five-Figure Day!

You’ll never believe what happened today! Remember my super tilted post about my disconnection? Well, I requested the hand histories today since HEM wasn’t able to record them and after importing them I discovered that in the hand against the giant fish he in fact just check/called the river and did not check/shove as I had previously thought. So then, how did I lose my money you ask? Well, somehow, I was actually beat! I had QQ on a QA9T7 board blind versus blind and he actually had J8, check/calling the flop with the gutter and only check/calling again on the turn and river when he hit! Sick! Anyway this meant that the disconnection only cost me $350-$600 (depending on whether my opponent paid me off in the other hand) and suddenly I felt like a new man; a huge burden had been lifted off my back.

All of a sudden, despite not having recorded a decent winning session in about a month, I felt really excited about playing again and jumped into an 8-tabling session. And what a session it was! My biggest ever in fact; a cool $11,285 in a little over 4 hours. I definitely ran ridiculously well, but even EV-adjusted I was making over $1000 an hour. Given that I hadn’t even made $1000 this entire month, I’m definitely extremely pleased with how today turned out. Let’s just hope that this wasn’t a one-off event and that the good run continues!

My MTT Journey – Dec 08 to Feb 09

When I decided last December to learn a thing or two about MTTs, I never envisaged the path that that decision would ultimately lead me to take. I had intended merely to put up a worthy effort defending my $10,000 buy-in at PCA, but in the end I became engulfed in the frustrations and excitement of the MTT world.

It all started of course with my $45,600 AUD score at APPT Sydney, a result which for me was significant not so much because of the money but rather because it reminded me just how exciting poker can be. The sense of excitement that I had felt when I made my first successful bluff had long given way to a monotonous and sometimes tedious grind on the online cash tables. In many ways that result and MTTs in general came just at the right time for me; they rejuvenated my desire for the game and gave me the impetus to keep improving.

When I arrived at PCA however I would be lying if I said I had prepared myself well for the event. Though I had meant to watch a lot of videos and whatnot, I couldn’t shake the desire to get my cash game graph for the year to $100,000. So in the end my preparation was shaky at best, consisting only of watching a few videos on the plane to the Bahamas (SEABEAST’s videos in particular), reading some of Bond18’s articles, and playing a few weeks of the Sunday majors beforehand and learning from my mistakes. Somehow though, despite my lack of preparation, I managed to cash at PCA which was a hugely satisfying result for me. It felt as though the validity of my preparation and even the happiness of my holiday depended on it, and though I know it sounds ridiculous I was actually more pleased with this cash than my APPT Sydney result.

When I got back to Sydney I decided to head down to Melbourne early and play a relatively full schedule at the Aussie Millions. I hadn’t intended to play the Main Event initially but flush with my newfound PCA funds I decided to have another once-in-a-lifetime crack at a million dollars. Though that never eventuated and the whole trip in fact turned out to be a disastrous decision for my bankroll, I definitely do not regret going as overall it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

When I came back, as if to make me feel better for my cold run down in Melbourne, Full Tilt decided to boomswitch me and I went on to win three tournaments in the space of a week, an overall profit of close to $20,000. Then, just one week later, I hit the Holy Grail – a $50,000 score in a PokerStars major. I remember when I used to try to satellite into the Party weekly tournament and balk at the thought of winning $60,000 for first. What would someone do with all that money!?!? It had always been my dream to win one of those ridiculous life-changing scores and all of a sudden completely out of the blue I had done it.

Unfortunately, with my summer holidays ending in two weeks so too must my foray into tournaments. I have one more Monday (i.e. Sunday in the US) of Sunday majors available to me but I decided to go out with a bang and finish up today since today marked the final day of the FTOPS series as well as the main day of the PokerStars 25 Billion Bash promotion; this meant huge fields across the board for the Sunday majors as well as two huge $2.5 million guaranteed marquee tournaments - the FTOPS Main Event and the PokerStars Sunday Million. I didn’t have too much success today, cashing only three times and going relatively deep only in one, but that’s life I guess.

Anyway, as of tomorrow, I’m back to being a full time cash player. It’s probably a good thing to be honest as my cash game has probably suffered these past few months as I’m only up about $1000 in cash games this year (though dropping several buy-ins at 10/20 has had a lot to do with that). The time also feels right as I’m actually wanting to play cash games again, something which could not have been said at the start of this year. In fact I think I was partially drawn to MTTs not so much because MTTs were good but rather because after playing cash games full time in December I had become so taxed that I really needed a break and the simplicity of MTTs offered me that.

Anyway, it’s definitely been a fun and worthwhile journey and I’m glad that I decided to take it. I never dreamed that I would have as much success as I did, and to top it off I got to travel across the world and have an awesome time while doing it.

FUCK YOU INTERNET!!!

OMG I AM SO FUCKING TILTED RIGHT NOW. MY FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT INTERNET DROPS OUT WHILE I HAVE SETS ON TWO TABLES IN POTS WORTH OVER $4,500 COMBINED. ON FULL TILT IT FUCKING FLASHES TO THE WHOLE WORLD I’M DISCONNECTED SO ON THE RIVER MY OPPONENT OBVIOUSLY MIN BETS TO TAKE IT DOWN. MEANWHILE ON PARTY THIS HUGE FISH CHECK-RAISED ME ALL IN ON THE RIVER 200BB DEEP WHILE I HOLD THE THIRD NUTS (AND I GUARANTEE YOU I WAS AHEAD). FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Au Revoir MSNL!

Well I finally completed my mini-challenge and am now up 10 buy-ins for the year at both 2/4 NL and 3/6 NL. I don’t know why but it feels really nice to have secured 10K at the lower stakes before I now move on to tackle 5/10+ for the rest of the year. If all goes well I won’t be returning to the land of three-digit buy-ins ever again. I’ll be willing to play 3/6 if a few particular fish sit down (read: scout or spikeyjak!) but for the most part I’d like to think my days at MSNL are over. I spent the best part of last year there and feel that I have more than paid my dues. Let’s just hope that I can have the same success this year at 5/10 and 10/20 as I did last year at 2/4 and 3/6!

Shipped 2nd Place in the Stars Quarter Million for $53,000!

Short Version

Came 2nd in the PokerStars Wednesday Quarter Million today for $53,000! Holy shit! By far my biggest score ever and it literally just doubled my online bankroll. Maybe these MTT donks are onto something! To be honest I’m a bit disappointed that I couldn’t close it out though, especially as I managed to turn a slight chip deficit at the start of heads-up into a 2-1 chip lead at one stage, but I guess I can’t have everything. To be fair, I only got to that lead as I was flopping monsters everywhere and getting paid off. Once the monsters stopped showing up, I literally couldn’t make a pair and was bled to death slowly, albeit with a couple of hemorrhages along the way (ironically, all due to big postflop bluffs that failed). Anyway, 50K is 50K so I’m definitely going to be able to sleep easy tonight!


Long Version

I woke up today just before 1PM intending to one table FTOPS I. However, I noticed that the 6-Max 100R on FTP and the Quarter Million on Stars were starting at the same time so I decided to join them as well.

FTOPS I

I got off to a great start in FTOPS I, getting my 5000 starting stack to 11000 in a matter of orbits. I doubled up with 77 versus KT on a K76QQ board versus quite possibly the biggest fish I’ve seen in an MTT ever. His VPIP was something like 88% which is quite an impressive feat in a full ring game.

Anyway my stack peaked at 13000 before taking a 5000 chip hit when my QQ failed to hold versus JJ all-in on an 852r flop. If I had won that pot I would’ve been in great shape with 18000 in chips with the average at 8000.

I lost another big pot soon after which all but knocked me out of contention. The small blind open limped and I checked my option with J5s. The board came J72r and he led out for pot and I called. The turn brought a Q and a flush draw and he potted it again and I called. I think this call is pretty standard as once he pots the Q turn his value range becomes infinitely more polarised to QJ, 22 and maybe Jxd although I think most Jxd will check/call the turn since their hand is probably good, they want to keep the pot small on the Q turn, and they don’t want to get blown off their flush draw by having to bet/fold the turn if I shove. The river brought an 8 which completed the backdoor flush and he instantly potted it again. I think calling here is pretty standard in cash but I think it’s probably better to opt for the safe route in a tournament and fold. It’s probably only slightly +cEV and the times you’re wrong you’re virtually out of the tournament entirely. Anyway I called and got shown QJo. It’s one of those really common and annoying spots in poker where your opponent’s value range is tiny and his bluff range is huge but his tendencies are such that he probably has the goods anyway. I didn’t know this opponent well enough so I had to rely on pure combinatorics but against someone who you knew was basically a nit I think you could find a fold.

Anyway this left me with 2400 chips and I open shipped 98o from the button soon after with 10bb’s, got called by 44 in the small blind and lost the race. Oh well.

6-Max 100R

In the 6-Max 100R, nothing too eventful happened and I had a decent stack the whole way through until my bust out hand. The cutoff opened and I 3-bet about 40bb’s deep on the button with K9s. When it was folded back to him he quickly clicked it back and suddenly I found myself in a fairly tricky spot. My initial intention was obviously to fold to a 4-bet but since his re-raise was so small I decided to see a flop. The flop came a beautiful K9T rainbow and he open jammed for about pot. I snapped and he showed up with the dreaded JJ. Of course a jack fell on the turn and I was out.

* * *

This left me one tabling the Quarter Million on Stars and I was honestly not paying attention at all. I had lost 90% of my chips in the first half hour after somehow running KK into QTo on a KJAss board (he raised UTG and called my 3-bet out of position; must be nice) and was down to 330 in chips with the blinds at 15/30. In fact so devoid of hope was I that I actually typed the FTOPS I and 100R recaps above while waiting to bust out of the Quarter Million. Some things obviously went my way though (I don’t remember at all) and I soon realised that I probably would be playing for quite a while longer. So I fired up some cash tables to keep me occupied and soon had five cash tables running alongside the Quarter Million.

* * *

Aside: I actually completely forgot that I played cash today until just then. I closed the cash tables as I neared the final table and never had the chance to see how I went in HEM. Anyway, I just checked my results then and I made 4.4K! Freaking unbelievable! You know it’s a good day when you make 4.4K on the side and completely forget about it!

* * *

Fast forward several hours and suddenly I found myself heads-up at the final table of the Quarter Million. I had 1.8M chips versus my opponent’s 2.2M to begin heads-up but soon turned that around into a 2.5M to 1.5M chip lead after I made two pair, a boat and a set in three different hands and won pretty decent sized pots with all of them.

The momentum turned however when I double barreled J9o as the preflop raiser on a T842 board and got check-raised all in on the turn. I had to fold, giving up not only a lot of chips but also a lot of the equity I had in that particular pot. A little while later I led the turn out of position in a limped pot on a 7h9x4h6x with J5 after the flop checked through. He called and the turn brought another 6. I checked fully intending to give up on the pot as I thought he would call me down light if I bet as all the draws missed. However when he bet himself something didn’t feel right as there is pretty much no way he can have something worth value betting here. He’d bet a nine or a seven for sure, but on such a wet flop I thought he would’ve bet those on the flop. The running 6’s are basically blanks unless they made him a straight (in which case he would’ve raised the turn) or trips (possible, but obviously unlikely) so the only other pair he could have here is a 4 which I don’t think he’d bet with on this river. So I decided that a missed draw was a sufficiently large part of his range to make a small check-raise bluff. Unfortunately, he quickly called with A6o.

The next to last significant hand that occurred I raised T4h from the button and he called. The flop came 779ss and gave me a backdoor flush draw. I made a continuation bet and he min-check-raised. He’d already done this once before on a paired flop and on that occasion I gave it to him without a fight despite how narrow a range he was representing. This time though I decided enough was enough and 3-bet him back. If he raised more I probably would have let it go as a larger raise would be consistent with a much wider range of hands – flush draws, trips, JT etc. But a min-click-it-back really only represented trip 7’s (he’d 3-bet 99 preflop I assume) and even then there aren’t that many 7’s he can have; he was very tight out of position to a raise so I didn’t think he’d even show up here with 87o ever. It was a suited seven or nothing, and there simply weren’t enough of those to go around. Unfortunately my opponent called my re-raise and I had to shut down, not even getting a chance to see his cards as he led the river after we checked through the 9 turn.

This left me crippled and three hands later, on the first hand of 25000/50000 blinds, I jammed K7s for 840K from the small blind. He called with AQo and although I flopped a 7 he turned a Q. All over red rover!

Anyway, it’s obviously been a great day for me. $57,200 days don’t come around too often and I’ll definitely make sure that I savour it.

Shot Turns Sour

Cash games are going pretty badly at the moment. I took a shot at some higher stakes games last night, playing 3 tables of 10/20 and 1 of 25/50 to go along with my usual 5/10 and 3/6 tables, and ended up losing something like $8000.

Two hands from my session stood out in particular. In the first I raised A4s from the button at 10/20 and got called by a solid reg in the big blind. The flop came QJ2r with one of my suit and I made a standard c-bet of $100 when he checked to me. I got check-raised to $280 and had to decide what to do. Folding is fine of course but this is a spot where my opponent is very likely to be bluffing. For one, the board is very dry so he’ll know that I’m c-betting with a high frequency and often with air. Secondly, there isn’t really much that my opponent can represent at all. He can’t really have a set as we’re only 100bb’s deep so flatting QQ or JJ preflop in his position would be peculiar to say the least and flatting 22 would be a flat out leak given how wide my opening range on the button is. This left AQ and QJ as the only two hands that he can legitimately do this with, and even AQ may 3-bet preflop or at least take a more passive line postflop (going nuts with AQ in a small pot like this on a board like this is usually inviting disaster). So my two options here I feel were to 3-bet bluff or to float. My typical line here is to double float and I think this is what I should’ve done – call flop, call turn, and shove river if he checks. I also have a backdoor wheel draw, a backdoor broadway draw and the backdoor nut flush draw so there’s a decent chance that I can back into a hand should my opponent end up firing three bullets. For some reason though I decided to make a small 3-bet bluff, a decision I regretted as soon as I made it. The problem with 3-bet bluffing here is that there is pretty much no made hand that I’d do it with. With an overpair or middle pair or a set, I’d just flat in this spot. So immediately I started thinking “man he’s going to see right through this and jam” and sure enough he did. At this point my mind started whirling and spinning and doing all those things a confused poker player’s mind does. As I said, I really felt that the only legitimate hands my opponent could have here were QJ and AQ (with AQ being weighted downwards somewhat). With just ace high I was actually ahead of all his pure bluffs and semi-bluffs and I felt that these bluffs made up a considerable portion of his range. Unfortunately, he could also be bluffing with a hand better than mine, something like 77 (though I think this is very unlikely) or AT (more likely). In the end I timed right down before making the hero call and got shown QJ. This sent me a little tilted as I was even for the session until then but I still think I was playing pretty well.

In the second hand we were $2900 deep at 10/20 when a fish opened in the cutoff and I 3-bet KQs from the small blind. The fish called and we saw a flop of AKQ with a flush draw (not mine). I bet and he called and the turn brought a total brick, an offsuit 5. At this point there was something like $1200 in the pot and we had $2300 effective behind, a really awkward stack to pot ratio to play with. If I bet $800 or so here on the turn, the pot would contain $2800 on the river and we’d have just $1500 behind meaning that I’d be committed to check/call a lot of bad rivers. So I decided that the best way to get the money in would be to go for a turn check/raise and so I check/shoved when he bet $600. He thought for ages and I was delighted to see that my hand was good. He eventually made the call with AT and binked a J on the river for a pretty huge pot. Now this is obviously just your standard bad beat, but to me it was a lot more. Not only did I lose the $5800 in that pot (a pretty huge sum for me) but I also lost $1300 a few hands later after I made a pretty bad and tilted river call. After that I decided to quit my session and that probably cost me another $1000 in opportunity cost alone as I had to leave a 25/50 table featuring Scout. So all in all that bad beat probably cost me about $8000. Ah well.

I was looking through my HEM for this year and I’m now down $6600 for the year. More disconcerting though is that I’m in the red for every level (except 25/50 ironically). So to get myself back on track I thought I’d set myself a little challenge. I want to be up $4000 at 2/4 and $6000 at 3/6 before I play 5/10 again. That should put my online bankroll back to about $68000. I’ll then try to win $12000 or so at 5/10 before reverting to playing 5/10 and 10/20 full time again. With an $80000 bankroll, hopefully the pain of losing $6000 pots will be somewhat lessened by then.

January Review

I obviously jinxed myself in my last post because after saying how great things were going I immediately went on a 15K downswing. Of course I refuse to have a losing month so I grinded yesterday into the early hours of the morning until I was even and then quit. All in all I made $281 in online cash in January - not a great month to start the year by any means but given that it really was only the last week of January that I played online I can’t complain too much. Of course, I also won close to $20K in online tournaments, so that always helps to soften the blow!

I played a pretty funny couple of hands against a fish last night that I thought I’d post here for pure entertainment value. The first actually made me laugh out loud when it happened which is not something I don’t think I’ve ever done before – cheered, yes, fist-pumped, yes, but laughed? I don’t think so!

Party Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $2,976.58
Hero (BB): $1,000
UTG: $1,726
MP: $2,121
CO: $1,000
BTN: $1,269.75

Pre-Flop: 6 4 dealt to Hero (BB)

4 folds, SB calls $5, Hero checks

Flop: ($20) K 7 A (2 Players)

SB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($20) 5 (2 Players)

SB bets $10, Hero calls $10

River: ($40) 8 (2 Players)

SB bets $50, Hero raises to $980 and is All-In, SB calls $930

Results: $2,000 Pot ($3 Rake)

SB showed 3 A and LOST (-$1,000 NET)

Hero showed 6 4 and WON $1,997 (+$997 NET)


Party Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $2,175.08
Hero (SB): $1,982
BB: $1,596
UTG: $2,121
MP: $1,000
CO: $1,219.75

Pre-Flop: 4 J dealt to Hero (SB)

3 folds, BTN calls $10, Hero calls $5, BB checks

Flop: ($30) 5 T A (3 Players)

Hero checks, BB checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($30) 7 (3 Players)

Hero bets $30, BB folds, BTN raises to $2,165.08 and is All-In, Hero calls $1,942 and is All-In

River: ($3,974) 7 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $3,974 Pot ($3 Rake)

BTN showed 9 8 and LOST (-$1,982 NET)

Hero showed 4 J and WON $3,971 (+$1,989 NET)

FTOPS XI is around the corner and I’m really looking forward to being able to play my first full FTOPS series. In the past I’ve had uni or exams or no bankroll so hopefully I’ll be able to put up some good results this time around. I’m going to try to play most of the bigger no limit events and want to do well in the 6-Max NLHE $300R in particular.

In other news I’ve decided to upgrade my monitor to a 30” Dell so I’m going to cash out about $2,000 for that. It’s definitely expensive (about $2000 AUD) but I think it’ll definitely be worth it, especially if I can play more tables and earn more money and make it back that way.