December Challenge

I just can't stay away from the Super Turbos. I am scrapping getting back to PLO for now, and am starting a new challenge for December. The goals are -

1. 30,000 profit from Super Turbos, including rakeback.
2. Win the High Limit SNG Leaderboard for December.

That's about it. I am writing my GRE on the 4th, so I may not play a lot before that. Having said that, I am super motivated to finish this, hopefully by Christmas, so that I can take a few days off before 2010. I ran out of ideas for graphs and stats during my last challenge, so if you want to see anything in particular, leave a comment.

New poll is up. Go vote.

EDIT: Added a much cooler voting gadget, so all the previous votes are gone. Vote again!!

Aftermath

Since completing the challenge, I have played exactly 0 hands of poker. I have however done a bit of coaching. I am suffering from a condition that DoubleEagle on 2p2 introduced me to - Winner's Tilt. I think it applies to most poker players, when we win we don't feel like playing more. When we lose, we have to play till we get back to even. Lots of people move up in stakes chasing their losses, luckily that is something I have never done. I have played maybe 300,000 hands of 1/2, but not a single hand of 2/4.

Hopefully, that will change soon. I am pretty much done with super turbos, and will be back to playing on Stars in the future. I plan on starting at 1/2 PLO, and then hopefully moving up from there. I will also throw in some tournaments and SNG's on the side. As for now though, I am going to be writing my GRE next week, so I need to study for that.

I am looking to start putting in serious volume again in around 2 weeks. I think I will set myself monthly challenges similar to this one, and see how that goes. This challenge definitely motivated me to play a lot more. In the meantime, I hope all of you get the run good out of your systems when I am not playing!!

Challenge Complete

It's weird, I thought I would be ecstatic that I finished the challenge in 2 weeks. But it feels kind of meh. I really enjoyed putting in all the hours and going through the ups and the downs. I purposely didn't set the target too high in case I got burned out. I think I will keep playing and see what I end up at after 30 days.

Here is the overall graph, it's missing a couple of SNG's, but my sharkscope officially says a profit of 20094.



Some Stats:

Super Turbos Played: 2723
Profit + Rakeback: 14892 + 5202
ROI: 4%
ROI with rakeback: 6%
Overall Profit: 20094
Hours Played: 86.4
Hourly: 232

By Buyin:

169's -
Played: 1559
Profit + Rakeback: 11857 + 3788
ROI: 5%
Overall Profit: 15645

75's -
Played: 879
Profit + Rakeback: 2430 + 1186
ROI: 4%
Overall Profit: 3616

45's -
Played: 270
Profit + Rakeback: 475 + 218
ROI: 4%
Overall Profit: 693

30's -
Played: 15
Profit + Rakeback: 130 + 8
ROI: 29%
Overall Profit: 138

Here's my distribution of finish positions -



Thanks for following the challenge, and I will continue to update my blog hopefully for a long time to come.

Short and Sweet

I played 3 and a half hours today, and won 4600. My EV for the day was 2500, so I definitely ran good, but also played really well. Lucky day thirteen I guess.

A few cool things about the challenge so far -

• I have had 3 royal flushes in this challenge. That's just nuts because the probability of a royal flush is 30940:1 (googling skills).


• I am 4th in the high limit SNG Leaderboard for November. That's cool because I have only played these 13 days of the month.


• I am now 4th in total profit in Super Turbos for the year, and very close to 3rd.

Overall Profit after day 13: 18410

Graph for the day -



Edit: Go Jeev and Randhawa at the World Cup tomorrow!!

A Dozen Days

I ran good finally!! My EV was -100 for the day, but I ended up +1500. This will just be a quick update since I am really sleepy and have been thinking and doing lots of work for that exciting news I mentioned earlier... which I cannot tell people for another couple of weeks.

Profit after day 12: 13810

What's cool is that if I ran at EV during this challenge, it would be over by now! Looks like I set a very reachable goal, but I needed to do that in order for me to just play more.

Here is the graph for 12 days of grinding, that have all blended into my mind as one big and long session.

Woot Woot, Part Deuce

First off, here is a quality article that is a must-read for everyone. It gives an amazing insight into the world of high stakes poker from a high stakes regular. After reading it, I got into thinking about why I play poker in the first place. I honestly don't dream of playing the nosebleed stakes where your every move is followed by railbirds and you can go on insane 6 or 7 figure downswings.

If I were to envision my dream poker future, it would probably involve being a successful tournament player including lots of travelling. MTT's are what got me into poker in the first place. I loved the feeling of going deep in one and making the final table out of 1000's of people. I hardly play any tournaments now because most of the big ones start very late at night here and take so long. The dream would also involve me crushing some game on the side (cash or SNG's), since I would go insane playing only tournaments.

Enough of the rambling - today seemed like it was destined to be another day of being unlucky. I played 208 super turbos today, and after 202 of them, my EV line was at 2500, and I had won only 500. I went on a nice run in the last 6, winning 4 of them and getting a 3rd. All of them were 169's. I have also pretty much stopped playing 45's and playing fewer 75's. I feel like there is such a fine line between playing your A game and your C game that when I get rid of those extra tables, I am able to make better decisions.

Overall Profit after day 11: 12094

Here is today's graph

Woot Woot

Finally a good day after a long time. All in all, after rakeback, it was a little over 5k!



I am pretty sure that is my first 5k day at anything except MTT's. Usually when I play cash or SNG's (outside the challenge), I stop playing when I am up a little for the day. I book the win and then feel good about it for a while. But today was different, because I just cannot not complete the challenge :)

The EV line was at 2900 for the day, which is very cool. The graph below is missing 1 SNG, which was a win in a 169... hence it's short by around 500.

Overall Profit after day 10: 9184

Sigh

Today was remarkably similar to yesterday.

Yesterday's EV: 800
Yesterday's Profit: -2000

Today's EV: 1000
Today's Profit: -1200

(EV is expected value, so how much I should have made if my luck was neutral)

I don't really feel like writing much. I am just happy that I am playing well again, and the red line is going up. I refresh my graph like 20 times a session to check on it! Here is the overall graph after 9 days, and you can see where I got out of autopilot mode.



Overall Profit after 9 days: 4157

Epiphany

After a few hours of playing today, I suddenly realized that I was completely in autopilot mode. I think this is one of the worst habits to fall into as a poker player. I realized that I was not playing my A game at all, and that I had become a little overconfident that I could beat the games without thinking.

I managed to snap out of it, and started thinking and applying myself more. And, it seemed to work so far. My EV line was at -1600 for the day, and ended up at +800. I was pretty pleased with that, as it seemed to be a direct consequence of me playing a lot better. With how I'm running during this challenge, it's a safe bet that I didn't actually win money for the day, I lost around 1500.

Graph for the day -



-1000 for the day, when you include rakeback.

Overall Profit: 5079

End of Week 1

Firstly, I have some pretty amazing and horrible news which I cannot tell anyone until early next month. Ha, so that will have to wait.

Week 1 is in the books and it was really swingy. Ended at +6152 with rakeback, so a little ahead of pace. I played 47 hours, which I am really happy with. 130 per hour, while running bad is decent.



Here's the EV graph



I ran well today, but still am around 5000 below EV. I am a little concerned with the stagnant red line in the last 2 days. It's never been breakeven for so long. I wonder if I am just running into unavoidable situations, or if other people are starting to adjust to my ranges and play better against me. I will find out soon enough.

Here are my results sorted by the different buyins. The first 4 are just profit, without rakeback. The next 4 are profit with rakeback.



Good night and I need the red line to start going up again!

Hands of the Week

This was the biggest fish ever. He had to call 150 more to win 1470, getting almost 10-1 and folded. He had to call with 23o, even if I flipped over quads!!

Full Tilt Poker Game #16123906954: $160+$9 Sit & Go (Super Turbo) (118661035), Table 1 - 40/80 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:12:55 ET - 2009/11/18
Seat 5: Hero (1,870)
Seat 9: glutdancer (830)
glutdancer posts the small blind of 40
Hero posts the big blind of 80
The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [3h 8c]
glutdancer calls 40
Hero checks
*** FLOP *** [8s 6s 6h]
Hero checks
glutdancer bets 640
Hero raises to 1,790, and is all in
glutdancer folds
Uncalled bet of 1,150 returned to Hero
Hero mucks
Hero wins the pot (1,440)


The next hand is one my favourites ever at Super Turbos. Who says you can't play postflop? I float the turn, and take it down on the river with jack high!!!

Full Tilt Poker Game #16136311651: $160+$9 Sit & Go (Super Turbo) (118787029), Table 1 - 20/40 - No Limit Hold'em - 4:03:30 ET - 2009/11/19
Seat 1: Chris Wolters (285)
Seat 2: ALLinwithdaBEST (255)
Seat 3: spunkyjbd521 (330)
Seat 4: johnnynsx (300)
Seat 6: solohomer (240)
Seat 8: dilo007 (810)
Seat 9: Hero (480)
dilo007 posts the small blind of 20
Hero posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [4h Jd]
Chris Wolters folds
ALLinwithdaBEST folds
spunkyjbd521 folds
johnnynsx folds
solohomer folds
dilo007 calls 20
Hero checks
*** FLOP *** [Tc 9d 7d]
dilo007 checks
Hero checks
*** TURN *** [Tc 9d 7d] [Qd]
dilo007 bets 80
Hero calls 80
*** RIVER *** [Tc 9d 7d Qd] [2c]
dilo007 checks
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero bets 360, and is all in
dilo007 folds
Uncalled bet of 360 returned to Hero
Hero mucks
Hero wins the pot (240)

Everything That Could Go Wrong Did

Just one of those days. I started off making a few stupid and careless mistakes - like thinking there were 5 people left when actually there were 4, not noticing some stack sizes, and 2-3 really annoying misclicks. I was still up a bit, and then the came the reason why not many people play super turbos for a living - insane variance.

I just ran into hand after hand, wasn't winning flips, and failed miserably at owning the bubble. This is my first losing EV day at super turbos since I moved up from the 28's. I tried and tried to get my EV line at least above 0, but 10 hours is enough of playing for the day. The EV line made a mini-comeback for the day, it was at -2500, and it ended at -990. I am really happy with how much volume I'm putting in. -3180 for the day, +650 rakeback.

Here's my overall graph so far until day 6.



Some tournies are missing, but that's the general picture. 6.5k under EV.

Official Profit after day 6 (including rakeback) - 4751

Tomorrow is the end of the first week of the challenge, and I'll post detailed stats, graphs and thoughts so far. Oh and I made a poll, go vote!!

Cool Day

I ran hot on my birthday. I didn't really celebrate it because I feel like I'm getting really old... before you know it I will be 25!! Ugh. Then 30, then after that it just gets depressing. I did have a couple of drinks though, and played more after that!!

I played 3 hours, and won 4242. Plus a couple hundred in rakeback. My EV was at 1800, so the green line finally decided to listen to me.

I realized that HEM is missing 8 or 9 tournies, so today's graph is from Sharkscope. 5 days down, 25 to go.



I was watching a PGA Tour Classic a few days ago, where Duval shot 59 on the final day to win by 1. He played pretty flawless golf, including an unbelievable eagle on the last for the 59. What on earth happened???

The Green Line Is Not Reading My Blog

Today was a decent day. I played 5 and a half hours, and won 928. My EV was at 1642, so I ran around 700 below EV. That seems standard for the challenge.

Totals so far -
Played: 820
Hours: 26
Profit: 881
Rakeback: 1495
Overall Profit: 2376

Graph after 3 days -

Lets GOGOGO Green Line

I woke up pretty late, since I was up all night after the MTT yesterday. I played around 6 hours today, and am very happy with how I'm playing. The only problem is my stupid luck.



So pretty much breakeven for the day. I ran a pretty crazy 3.5k below expectation today. Combine that with yesterday, and I am around 6k below EV in 2 days. I feel the return of the green line tomorrow!!

Totals so far for the challenge -
Days: 2 and a bit
Hours: 21
Profit: -44 (!!)
Rakeback: 1170
Overall Profit: 1126

The first person that calls me a rakeback pro gets a punch in the face.

A few boring anecdotes from today -

1. Came 5th in a $75 turbo for 1.5k. Entered the final table with maybe 30% of the chips, but lost every race then.
2. I entered a $11 45 man super turbo for fun, and won that.
3. My golf tournament got rained out.

Marathon Day

I'm pretty sure this is the most poker I have ever played in a day. I played around 12 hours, largely because I started off running horribly, and then I entered a few tournaments to go along with the super turbos. Aaaaaaaaand I shipped a 24$ freezeout for 5.5k!! It's obviously the boomswitch that comes with starting a blog. I won't be counting that towards the challenge though, since the goal is 20k with only super turbos

Here is the (not so) pretty graph from my first day of the challenge. I did start a few hours before midnight, so it's actually a day and a bit.



For the poker illiterate, the red line is how much I should have won had my luck been neutral.
The green line is how much I actually won.
The blue line is how much I won plus rakeback.

473 Super Turbos
Profit: 578.8
Rakeback: 865.35
Total Profit: 1444.15

Taking down a tournament feels so good. I think this is my 3rd. I was playing super LAG early on, just messing around, since I had already been knocked out of the 100 FO. And I ran into aces with like 100 left, but binked a 2 outer on the river for a huge stack. That made me focus, and I feel I played pretty well after that. Some fun hands -

1. The one where I played like a donkey and got lucky

Full Tilt Poker Game #16024366321: $16,500 Guarantee (117431807), Table 84 - 3000/6000 Ante 750 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:51:56 ET - 2009/11/14
Seat 1: flowwdizzzle (75,320)
Seat 2: RippSlo (81,410)
Seat 3: 86BlackWidow (72,622)
Seat 4: tapisnoir (273,965)
Seat 5: Hero (212,535)
Seat 8: matgagn (85,712)
Seat 9: pokerstar577 (163,960)
flowwdizzzle antes 750
RippSlo antes 750
86BlackWidow antes 750
tapisnoir antes 750
Hero antes 750
matgagn antes 750
pokerstar577 antes 750
tapisnoir posts the small blind of 3,000
Hero posts the big blind of 6,000
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [5d Js]
matgagn folds
pokerstar577 folds
flowwdizzzle folds
RippSlo folds
86BlackWidow folds
tapisnoir raises to 12,000
Hero calls 6,000
*** FLOP *** [5c 8c 4h]
tapisnoir checks
Hero bets 18,000
tapisnoir raises to 42,000
Hero calls 24,000
*** TURN *** [5c 8c 4h] [4s]
tapisnoir bets 54,000
Hero raises to 157,785, and is all in
tapisnoir calls 103,785
Hero shows [5d Js]
tapisnoir shows [As Ac]
*** RIVER *** [5c 8c 4h 4s] [5s]
Hero shows a full house, Fives full of Fours
tapisnoir shows two pair, Aces and Fives
Hero wins the pot (428,820) with a full house, Fives full of Fours

2. The final hand. The guy who I played HU had 3bet overshoved on my opens like 15-20 times at the final table, and I never had a hand. So this felt good.

Full Tilt Poker Game #16026336750: $16,500 Guarantee (117431807), Table 84 - 12000/24000 Ante 3000 - No Limit Hold'em - 18:23:24 ET - 2009/11/14
Seat 5: Hero (1,728,836)
Seat 6: Roswell56 (1,322,164)
Hero antes 3,000
Roswell56 antes 3,000
Hero posts the small blind of 12,000
Roswell56 posts the big blind of 24,000
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Kd Jc]
Hero raises to 48,000
Roswell56 raises to 150,000
Hero calls 102,000
*** FLOP *** [7s 2c Kc]
Roswell56 bets 1,169,164, and is all in
Hero calls 1,169,164
Roswell56 shows [9d 9h]
Hero shows [Kd Jc]
*** TURN *** [7s 2c Kc] [Ad]
kool181 (Observer): i remember when i went out 5 hrs ago
*** RIVER *** [7s 2c Kc Ad] [3h]
Roswell56 shows a pair of Nines
Smoke Tha Zags (Observer): gg
Hero shows a pair of Kings
Hero wins the pot (2,644,328) with a pair of Kings
Smoke Tha Zags (Observer): wp

I Lied a Little

I feel like playing right now, so the challenge will now be a 30.2 day challenge... or maybe the 1 month challenge sounds better?

30 Day Challenge

Welcome to my blog!!

I've always loved reading other poker blogs (shout out to Aaron), but I never felt the urge to keep one. The reason I am starting one is that my motivation to play a lot has been dwindling in the past few months.

So, starting tomorrow, I am challenging myself to make 20k in 30 days at super turbos, including rakeback. I have had a couple of 20k months before, but it doesn't seem like that will happen unless I actually play. I will be playing the 160s, and if there aren't enough of them running, I will mix in a few 70s, 42s, and 28s. I won't be playing more than 12 tables at once.

Reasons for this challenge -
1. Motivate myself to play a lot more poker.
2. Make money.
3. Move up the leaderboard for most profit in Super Turbos for the year. I am currently in 5th.
4. I like challenges.

I will try and update this everyday, and maybe post graphs and detailed results once a week or whenever I feel like (when I run good obviously).