Summary 06/08/2007 – A sick upswing / selling FPPs

This week started with the sickest upswing I have experienced so far. I spent $60 from my own roll to take a shot at the $50NL and $100NL levels to see what the competition is like. I played about 2,000 hands in 6 hours and had an incredible run. After four double ups with a full $100 stack (set over set, full house over full house, nut flush over straight and quads over set) I ended the session at $532.96. I cashed out $400. I’ll put some of my PokerOffice stats here later today.

I didn’t play much on my cash game BAP lately, but will continue my daily routine tonight. The BAP bankroll is at $321.49 (+71.49) at the moment.

Cash Games

• 4-tabling $50NL and $100NL on private BR: +$532.96 – Cashed out $400 (=€291.60) – BR: $72.96
• Cash BAP for Fourclover1: ±$0 – BR: $321.49

Staking

• revived the SNG STEP Heeb for damajha: invested $14.82

Bonuses/Affiliate Payments

• Sold three €25 amazon.de-vouchers on ebay for €66.94

Total Profit: $609.96 – Cashed out: €358.54

First Live Success

Yesterday I played my 1st live event organized by bavarianpokertour.de. It was a €15-buyin 33 player freeze-out tourney with 10,000 starting chips and 15 minute blind levels starting at 100/200. The prizes were: A €100 buyin for a tournament plus accomodation for two people for 1st place, a €100 buyin for the same tourney for 2nd place and a free ticket for a BavarianPokerTour-tourney for 3rd.

I got really lucky cards, including AA, KK, QQ, JJ and TT once respectively and played a very solid tight-aggressive game. For the first hour I played only 3 hands, and was able to steal some blinds later on due to my extremely tight table image. It’s amazing what people call with in those kinds of fun live events. I took down one or two remarkable pots, one being a pre-flop all-in with my AA against QQ which I won.

After about two hours, we started the final table with me being the chipleader with 77k in chips. The blinds were 8k/16k at this point, so I decided to continue my TAG game because I really wanted to come in 3rd at the least. As the blinds grew to 16k/32k, the table became horribly maniacal. There was an all-in situation every hand and about ten hands later, we were only five players with me not having played a single hand. My stack was down to 50k because of the blinds when I got AhJh and went all-in pre-flop. One player called with his last 25k and won with 77. The very next hand three players saw the flop with two all-ins and both went bust, leaving only three players. So I had reached my goal to make it “ITM”, but I only had 25k left (less than one BB). Luckily I was on the button when the BB had to go all-in and busted, so I had made it into heads-up.

Of course I was a huge underdog, the chipleader put me all-in the on first hand. I had 89 offsuit and called (with less than one BB I would have called any hand at this point). He showed 77 and none of my two overcards were paired. So I came out 2nd for a tourney voucher, which I’m really satisfied with.

After all, what I’m even more proud of is the solid game I played. I admit that I had some very nice cards in this tourney, but there were some hands where I made some really good reads, forced my opponents to fold or caught them cold bluffing. Additionally, I think I have solid over-all tournameny strategy by now which will hopefully help me in my future games. Playing live is so much more fun than online, it’s just sad that the legal situation in Germany is so bad.

The tourney entry I won is for the weekly €100 freeze-out tournament at the Pokerclub Salzburg which usually has about 60 players. I’ll play it on August 10th, one day before my big $500,000 MTT on CDPoker. I’m really looking forward to playing these two events and hope I can continue my good run.

$10,000 VIP Freeroll

I entered 30 minutes late at level 3 (30/60). Three sitouts at my table, one guy keeps buying a lot of pots pre-flop, the rest of the table is rather tight-passive.

Level 4 (40/80)
I raise all-in for 1780 with JJ. MP, who got me covered, calls with AQs, I win the race.

Level 5 (50/100)
Ah9h in the cut-off, MP raises to 400, everyone folds, I call. Flop comes 2h9sKs, MP bets 300, I raise to 600, he calls. Turn 6c, we both check. River 10, he bets 600, I call. He shows AKo. I’m down to 1680.

Level 6 (100/200)
QQ in LP, no limpers, I bet 800 and collect the blinds. Stack now 1980.

Ah8h in the BB, one limper, button raises to 800, I fold. He goes to showdown with the limper, and shows AQo.

Been moved to another table, 1st hand dealt is As2s in LP. One limper, I call and everyone behind me folds. The flop comes KJ4 and is checked to me, I check. Turn is another 4, LP min bets, we both call. River a 5, another min bet which I must call, and loose of course.

— 1st break —
Down to 1080 chips with the average stack being 3214. 410 players remaining of 659. I’m really disappointed with my play tonight. Now it’s already time to switch into shove/fold mode, hopefully I can double up before the blinds eat me alive.

Level 7 (150/300)
QhTh, I shove and collect the blinds. Stack now 1530.

JJ in the SB, button raises all-in for 8920, I shove. He shows 5c8c and I double up to 2760.

I’m moved to another table with four sitouts, only one smaller stack and one guy with 14k chips.

Level 8 (200/300)
AA in EP, I min raise, but everyone folds, I collect the blinds.

KQo, I steal the blinds.

Level 9 (300/600)
Almost gone here: I have AT in MP. EP with 19k chips leads out for 2400, SB folds, BB is already all-in. I put him on a blind steal and call, which puts me all-in. He shows 88, the SB JQ. The turn is an A and I double up to 6560.

Another crazy hand: AA in the BB. EP raises to 1200, one caller, I push all-in. EP calls and shows KK, and the flop comes KA9. Turn and river don’t help EP, so I double up again to 14320. This puts me into no. 30 of the remaining 150.

JsTs in LP, none calls, so I limp, button raises all-in for 4k, I fold.

Level 10 (400/800)
completely card dead.

Level 11 (500/1000)
only 97 left with the top 80 payed.

22 in the SB, EP 3-bets, everyone folds.

Ah8h in MP, I min raise, BB calls. Flop A25, I min raise, BB folds.

Level 12 (750/1500)
TT in EP, I 3-bet and collect the blinds.

We’re ITM.

— 2nd break —
I’m 36 of 61 with 15520 in chips (average is 21606).

Level 13 (1000/2000)
66 in EP, I push, button calls with JJ, I’m left with 9550.

77 on the button, MP raises to 4k, CO calls, I push for 6550. MP re-raises all-in, CO folds, and MP shows AA…

…I’m out 54th for $20.

$11 SNG Test Run, Progress in my STEP System

I played four $11 SNGs on PS to test the waters. The level of play is comparable to the $5.50, as far as I can see that in this small sample size.

Tourney 1 $11 18-man – placed 6th

Could have probably folded into the money, but tried to steal the blinds with my AK and ran into a small pocket pair…

Tourney 2 $11 9-man – placed 2nd for $27.00

I entered heads-up with a 3:1 chiplead, but went down to 150 after a dumb move. I then managed to triple up three times cracking my opponents Ax by catching something on the flop or turn, but eventually lost (don’t remember the exact hand).

Tourney 3 $11 9-man – placed 9th

bad run, don’t remember the exact hand, but it was something like my straight against a higher straight.

Tourney 4 $11 18-man – placed 1st for $72.00

I won the heads-up with 88 against AQ (both pre-flop all-in). He catched his Ace, but I spiked my set. I guess 88 could be called the “Jerry Yang” hand, since he won the WSOP 2007 main event yesterday by hitting a runner-runner straight with 88.

Total profit: $55.00. Not a bad run I guess, though I could have probably folded into the money in tourney 1.

I’ll cashout 5-10% of my daily winnings from now on, so that’s $5.50 this time.

The strategy of multitabling a 9-man and an 18-man seems to be a good idea, since it straightens out the bubble situations a bit. Playing two or more bubble or even heads-up situations simultaneously is no fun at all

Three of my horses run pretty good in my STEP system. Joker_69696 is up about $19 playing the 1.20s, DMoney78 is up about $25 playing the 5.50s and 6.50s and damajha made about $10 playing the 1.20s. ChessSafari only played one 3.40 (PLO8) so far, but won it for $15.00.
Only one horse who blew it so far (busting the whole $12 initial stake), but he was so kind as to reimburse me with $6 and promised to send me the other $6 later on.

Tonight (Friday) at 23:59 PST will be the first weekly payout, so I should receive a nice amount compared to my investment if nothing really bad happens.

Business as usual

My $250 Cash Heeb for $Clover is slowly going up again. I didn’t have much time to play it for the last couple days, but will play it regularly again starting friday. I’m at a profit of about $65 there, which is quite ok I guess.

I’m also running a SNG stake for ChessSafari on Bugsy’s, which I’ll hopefully finish by the weekend. MrTompa staked me for 4 4.40 180-mans, but I couldn’t place in the first 2 yesterday, though I played a solid game.

I’ve thought up a new staking system which I’m test-running on neverbeg.com at the moment. It’s a normal STEP system, but with weekly payouts. I have five horses running at the moment, among others ChessSafari, which is a very honest and trustworthy horse. Another horse in my STEP system is DMoney78, who turned out to be a really lucky pick. He’s a SNG killer so far and has heebed the original $22 to around $90 at the moment. He’s playing a lot, and I hope this will bring us both regular weekly payouts (scheduled for fridays).

As for playing on my own roll, I think I have to rule off my cash games for the moment. I have been grinding the longhanded NL100 tables occassionally for about two weeks, only to end up about even, but with some huge up- and downswings. Concerning cash games, I will now completely focus on $Clover’s NL25 heeb, where I perform far better. With my own roll I’ll give a shot at single-table SNGs once more. I think I’ll play a small series of 5.50 9-mans or 6.50 9-man turbos tonight and see where I stand in those.

I need only 900 more FPPs to become a gold star on pokerstars for the first time! I think I’ll reach those in about 4 to 5 days, which will allow me to buy some amazon.de vouchers in the pokerstars FPP store, which I plan to sell on eBay.

Summary May 2007

My first PokerOffice-tracked month was a successful one in retrospective. Here are some stats for the month of May.

I started with a $50 deposit and ended with a total net bankroll (after cashouts) of $140, which is a growth of $90 or a ROI of 180%. Additionally, I made a total profit (cashout-cashin) of $164.36.

The biggest part of my winnings comes from the $0.10/0.20 NL cash games at CDPoker. Here, I have total winnings of $309.95 in 5,500 hands at about 7 BB/hr (=13.87 BB/100 Hands). A leak I have to work on is my SeenFlops%, 28% is way too high (see the green graph). My overall aggression factor of 1.7 (red graph) is quite low, so the motto will be “play less hands, but more aggressively”, not very surprising…

My short visit (about 900 hands) at the $0.25/0.50 level was a complete frustration, I lost $102.10 there. That’s quite surprising for me since I feel ready for this level, but I guess my bankroll makes me play too scared. I don’t have my SNG stats at hand right now, but I think they even out with a slight positive tendency, but nothing worth mentioning.

Ok, so I now have a $140 bankroll, which means I will have to continue to grind it out at the $0.10/0.20 level. I have about $100 in pending commissions however, which should come through at the middle of June, maybe I’ll invest $50 of these for another try at the $0.25/0.50 level.

I’m not sure how to proceed with my SNG play. At CDPoker, my SNG winnings seem to even out over the long run. At Pokerstars, I had a really good run in the $1.20 9-mans lately, but I somehow don’t have the motivation to play these low levels, so I guess I’ll have to wait until my bankroll allows me to advance at least to the $3.30 level.

May 2007 stats
Start Bankroll: $50, End Bankroll: $140 = ROI 180%
Cash ins: $50, Cash outs: $214.36 = Profit $164.36

SNGs at Pokerstars

I tried out some SNGs on Pokerstars this week, which seem to be incredibly easy to beat so far. I just played extremely tight at the beginning and bet big with the nuts and my straight ABC poker brought me ITM most of the time. It’s amazing what you get called with when you put constant pressure on the players at this level. Nowadays, my favourite move seems to be to check-call on the flop and turn with a monster hand and to put my opponent all-in on the river, I have made quite a bunch of huge pots this way.

Here are some stats:

$1.20 9man SNGs, top 3 payed
Places: 4th, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 6th, 1st, 3rd, 8th
Total winnings: $23.40 gross, $11.40 net
Total cost: $12.00
ROI: 95%
ITM: 7/10 = 70%

$1.20 45man SNGs, top 7 payed
Places: 26th, 32nd, 1st, 2nd, 12th, 29th, 1st
Total winnings: $38.00 gross, $29.60 net
Total cost: $8.40
ROI: 352%
ITM: 2/7 = 29%

Since these were all staked, I had to give half of my winnings back to the stakers, so I guess I’ll start to play these on my own money now. I’ll also apply for some stakes for bigger buyins to test the waters there.

Sigh…

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $0.25 BB (8 handed) by Hand Converter CG

saw flop|saw showdown

SB ($4.75)
BB ($12.05)
UTG ($39.10)
UTG+1 ($14.40)
MP1 ($28.55)
Hero ($13.55)
CO ($14.70)
Button ($15.90)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with Q, A.
2 folds, MP1 raises to $0.75, Hero raises to $1.25, 4 folds, MP1 raises to $2.25, Hero calls $1.

Flop: ($4.85) 4, 9, J (2 players)
MP1 bets $2, Hero calls $2.

Turn: ($8.85) 6 (2 players)
MP1 bets $1, Hero calls $1.

River: ($10.85) 9 (2 players)
MP1 bets $9, Hero calls $8.30 (All-In).

Final Pot: $28.15
Main Pot: $27.45, between MP1 and Hero. > Pot won by MP1 ($27.45).
Pot 2: $0.69, returned to MP1.

Results in white below:
MP1 has Jh Js (full house, jacks full of nines).
Hero has Qd Ad (flush, ace high).
Outcome: MP1 wins $28.14.

Moving to Pokerstars

My morning session at CDPoker today was profitable again, I’m up to about $120 by now. As I’m going on a short trip to London next week for which I need some cash, I’ll withdraw $100 from my CDPoker account tonight. I’ll spend the remaining bucks on some low-buyin MTTs just for fun, but I’m not really expecting a profit from that.

I’ve been hanging around at Pokerstars a lot lately, both playing and giving out stakes at Neverbeg.com and got accustomed to their software. CDPoker is still my favourite in terms of usability and features, but since I keep only winning tournament tokens from PokerInside and not placing in their cash leaderboard, I think I’ll move to Pokerstars completely over the long run.

When my current stakes are all finished, I’ll make cash check and make up a strategy. I hope to have about $20 in my Pokerstars account when my horses finish their stakes, so I’ll probably start heebing at the $.10/.25 tables and hope I can continue my winning streak from CDPoker.

My free $50 bankroll on UltimateBet has melted down quickly due to some really dumb risky play. I’ll keep the remaining $15 there as an emergency bankroll in case my play at Pokerstars doesn’t work out as expected.

Summary Week 20/2007

Just a short summary today since I’m in a hurry:

Starting Bankroll: $131.06
End Bankroll: $161.36

Cashed out $50 and invested in two BAPs on Neverbeg.com, outcome tbd.

New Bankroll: $111.36
Week Goal: $250