ZOMG! Way to blow it, nemo!

Well I had a good start to July as far as MTTs are concerned yesterday. I fired up the $3r on Stars and it had 5967 runners. First place was $9k and I was very determined. I'm sure you all remember how I said I've been running deeper and deeper in this biotch each time I play it and last night was a turning point for me. I busted 68th place for $110 and is by far my best result in this tourney. I played very well all the way up to a $200k stack and just stole a lot of blinds to stay alive as I was very card dead. I did really well with a $250k stack when the blinds were really high and I only had 10-15bbs. I guess SNG experience is paying off for MTTs as well as I could have easily busted around 200th place or so ;)

My other tourney was the $1r Daily Dollar Rebuy on Full Tilt Poker. It had 2615 runners and a crazy $2k for 1st place. I didn't think too much of this but as we were getting close to the money I had noticed that I had a Top 10 stack. I started to bulldoze my table (was seated table 2 which was convenient) and busted a lot of shorties on the bubble and after the bubble. The real turning point for me was when we were down to about 200 players and I had Ah9h in MP. I had a $250k stack and had only opened a couple hands from MP before now. I 2.5xbb raised and the button, who I had pegged as a very aggro player, obviously repops me an additional 3x. I thought about folding but had noticed him doing this everytime he was on the button for the last 4-5 orbits. He had a bigger stack than me and was probably seated 2-3rd in chips atm. I decided to flat... Flop comes down all hearts obv as I'm a super luckbox. I chizzeeck to the raiser and he pot bets it. I tank for show and call. Turn is a face card that completes a straight, I check again. He bets pot again and I tank. He was blowing up the chat saying "I have the nuts, fold. You can't beat me!" at which point I said "I have good notes on you, you're a donkey. I have TPTK I think I'm good" so I shove. He snap calls with the straight and now I'm 2nd in chips, weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! I continued to crush the tables and knock out players left and right. It really sucks it wasn't a Knockout tournament as I'd be hella rich from all the knockouts I made. We got down to 50 players and I was sitting 1st in chips and thought there was no way I wasn't going to FT this biiitch. I was so wrong. Back to back hands and I'm out of the tournament 50th place for $20. I'm very disappointed in my play as I definitely spewed my last two hands. Sigh oh well.

I'm going to be giving both tournaments a shot again today. Hopefully I can turn some good results again and take something down! Wish me luck fishies!

Also I plan on getting in 100+ SnGs today. We'll see how well that goes haha.

June Summary // July Goals

So the month of June was pretty hof imo. I made some decent profit and completed all my goals. Won a prop bet and lost another but overall it was a sicko month for nemo. I had some downswongs and some BS beats(according to Mik haha).

Completing my goals was obv a big thing for me as I never really set goals for myself with poker. I wish I had the time and motivation to write more on this blog so I'll do a proper blog about my June summary later.

July! WEE! Haven't really played much this month but I have some pretty sick goals. They are listed below:

1. Play 2k games
2. Make $2k profit.
3. Move up to the $12s
4. Ship an MTT or two.
   

I'm sure I'll come up with some others as i get a proper chance to update this blog. Tty guys soon!

SHIP IT BABAAYY! Warning: Long read.

So it's now 12:08am on Tuesday, June 30th which means that the prop bet officially ended 8 minutes ago. I took a few days off poker as I was pretty upset after my last post. I really loved the comments that were left on that post and starting right now I'm going to take what you guys say to heart and not play so many tables and really concentrate on 6-tabling. DISCLAIMER: Remember I said starting right now, because after what you're about to read you may puke. Anywho, Carl sort of forfeited the prop bet and only finished 98 games total with an awesome ROI so congrats for beating the games that I struggle with m8! I managed to complete 309 games total with an amazing -9% ROI haha. Before today I had only played 198 games so I decided to 20-table $1/45s which obviously sucks and 20 tabling is something I don't really suggest to anybody who hasn't practiced it as I obviously suck. I had to 20 table because that was clearly the only way to get in 102 games played today obv, so don't expect to hear about me 20 tabling again anytime soon. The reason for Carl's forfeiting is quite simple, he's doing well in MTTs again and had two decent scores yesterday so I can't blame him for not wanting to grind the SnGheys. He still needs to ship me the 10% which is around $300+ so weeeeeeeeeeee for me imo :D

Now onto a more awesome topic. Chip "z32fanatic" Ferguson is finally back in Austin and ready to coach me. He picked me up last night around 11pm and we went back to his house. We discussed some basic strategy as I had loads of questions for him. He then had this awesome idea of going over some HHs for some SNGIcons.com videos that he needs to make and I obviously was very extatic to take up such an offer. We sat there for about 3-4 hours and made a total of 3 videos of HHs. Chip was real critical of my play which is exactly what I need as a player. I'm glad he's not a coach that sugar coats shit to make his students feel better. He said things how they were and verbally smacked me in the face for some of the dumb shit I've been doing in my games. After that session I certainly felt like I could beat the $6s so today I fired up a couple small sessions. I was only 6 tabling and just did 2x sets of 6 instead of my continuos loading of games once I've busted. I managed to FT 2 of them but couldn't get a good score. I FT bubbled ALL of the others and went out getting it in good as far as theory is concerned. I felt great about all the games and was 100% concentrated while playing and wasn't making stupid moves like shoving over limpers in high blinds with A9s. After I finish this I'm going to start up my regular grind again and we shall see how I do in the next couple days. If any of you are members of SNGIcons.com look out for my HH vids soon! I'm gonna be famous w00t!

MTTs!!! Weeeeeeeee! I've been doing fairly decent in them recently. Carl convinced me to play the $3r on Stars yesterday. It had something like 8k runners and nearly $12k ftw. I did really well and went decently deep in it. Wound up busting 475th for like $30 when my TT lost to 77 aipf. Why that guy would think his 77 was good preflop I have no idea but oh well, can't think about stuff like that. What can I say, I have the MTT bug again! I had about $78 on FTP today and decided to donk it off in some MTTs but the only ones that were about to start were the $6 KO Super Turbo and some $1 regular MTT. The $6KOST started first and had 708 runners. I started off really good with a quick quadrople up and kept building my stack throughout the tourney with very well timed aggression. I had a top 10 stack with around 40 players left and it was something like $800+ ftw. I had $$$ in my sights until I got dealt the dreaded 88. I was in the CO with about 11bbs(the avg stack was 2bbs) and there was two limpers in front. Only one of the limpers could bust me out of the tourney as he had about 2bbs more than me so I decided to get a little crazy and push. It folds around to this guy who tanks. I start to think to myself "fuuuuuuccckkkkkkk" as he nearly timebanks all the way down. He then does the most moronic thing I've ever seen anybody do and calls with T7o. The flop comes down 68J and I'm like "weeeeeeeee" as I thought there was virtually no way i'm losing this hand as he was drawing dead and this pot would have given me 2nd in chips! The turn is a blank, but the fooking dreaded 9 comes down on the river. I nearly cried as my hopes and dreams of winning that MTT went out the window and I had to settle for 33rd place. Sigh oh well next time right?

The $1 MTT(947 runners) had already started as I was running deep in the $6KO and I didn't really pay much attention to it to be completely honest with you. I was too focused on my $6/45s on Stars and the $6KO. After I was finished with my two sessions of 45s on Stars I decided to pay much more attention to the MTTs I had on FTP. I got a little bored just 2 tabling so I degen'd a bit and fired up a $12 90 KO to go with my two other MTTs. The $1 MTT was going real smooth and I was playing a very TAG game which is a little out of the norm for me as I'm usually pretty LAG when it comes to MTTs. The game took a real turn for me when there was about 200 players left. I had a 7k stack and blinds where 200/400 with a 25 ante and I had AA UTG+1. I raised it 2.5x and a big stack behind me with about 20k shoved. It folded around to me and I snapped obv. Flop came down KK4 and I was drawing nearly completely dead until the turn brought an A. I still didn't think much about it and was about to close the window when the river binked the last A. Weeeeee! Ship it babaaayy! The poker Gods were on my side and again I had $$$ in my eyes. About an hour later I managed a triple up when two big stacks were all in preflop and I was looking down on KK in the bb. I snap and they had QQ and JJ. I held and was looking damn good to make a deep run. I abused the bubble relentlesly and build up a 65k stack from 40k all on the bubble. I was pleased with myself as I had a Top 5 stack. The bubble burst and as usual it was a crazy all-in fest and I stayed out of the way and let the shorties take each other out. There was one guy on my table with like 5bbs after the money burst and managed to build up 40bbs by doubling up and taking on everybody. He was getting in with some disgusting hands that I would never play aipf but it was clearly working for him as all the chips on the table slowly went to this guy. After another 30 minutes or so I'm sitting in MP with AhKh and the big stacked donk limps UTG+1. I decided to raise it 6x preflop and it folds around to him and he calls. The flop comes down KsJhTh. He donk bets 1/4th the pot into me. I decide that I have so many outs even if I'm behind to two pair or a made straight here so I just ship it all-in. He insta-calls with Q8o. Neither of his cards were hearts btw... the turn is the 9d and the river is a blank. I busted in 59th place to the biggest donkey in the MTT but what can I do about it ya know? I played the hand like a champ and he sucked out, gg and good effort.

I was getting really deep in the $12/90 KO when I busted from the $1MTT and I decided to give it my full, undivided attention. I had a top 10 stack almost the whole way through it and when we got down to 10 players there was some medium stack on my table with about 20k in chips who kept shoving all-in preflop with 20bbs. I thought it was kinda funny for him to be shoving with such a big stack but it was mostly annoying me. Then I looked down on 88 in the BB and this donkey shoves for 23bbs again. If I called and lost, i'd be left with 8bbs and still some room to play. If I called and won, I'd be CL on the FT. I decided to go for the call. I know it's a very marginal spot but there was many reasons why I decided to go for it:

1. He had pushed the last 4 hands in a row.
2. I had a medium PP and figured my hand was ahead of his range.
3. If I lost my flip I'd still have chips to play.
4. If I won my flip I'd be CL at the FT.
5. I really just wanted to see what this idiot was shoving with 23bbs.

He turns over AKo and my 88 holds. The FT was very straight forward: I pulled off a massive bluff to put me over 100k in chips and it was easy money from there. I continued to eliminate players and when we got HU I had an 8to1 CL and AA first hand in the bb. The guy shoves and it's game over.

After all of that 'run good' I was up $388 on FTP which brings me to my next topic... I have finished my final goal for the month of June. I'm very pleased as I started the day with only $650 roll and now I'm around $1300. I'm looking forward to setting new goals for July. Look out for all the greatness to come people! I'm going to get back to my grind so have fun and gl!

Prop bet - Day 3

Absolute disaster has struck as I've lost 20% of my bankroll. The games are just as soft as ever but I can't get my big hands to hold up. There's more donkeys calling super light even in the early levels. I was dealt AA 11 times today and lost 9 times with it, the other two times everybody folded preflop. It's just been a sick day. I played a total of 77 games with a -28% ROI. So whicked. Total games played are 185 with an ROI of -2%. Carl is crushing the games but still has a very small sample size. I wish I could run as good as him. He's played a total of 77 games and currently has an ROI of 79% and some really nice profit.

I'm not even going to bother posting a pic of my graphs or anything as it's quite clear I'm upset about the whole situation. I did manage to bust Carl out of one of the 45s so that was cool :D. Seeing as I really have no chance in hell of winning this prop bet, I might as well ship him the 10% of my BR now and get it over with. It's not really worth it for me to play out the rest of the 115 games because even if he goes on a major downswong I still can't win.

I've been thinking that maybe I've been playing badly lately. I opened up some HHs and gone through them and have been real critical of some of my moves which is good, but when I run them through SNGWiz it shows that it's a profitable move. I'm so confused. Why have I been running so bad lately? Chip Ferguson comes back on Sunday and is finally going to sit down and watch me, hopefully I get some quality coaching in as I surely need it. I DESPERATELY need it... Playing poker for a living should be fun but when you can't pass a certain milestone then it becomes something you dread doing.

I moved into this house with a BR of $462 and grinded it up to nearly $1k with no coaching. I have not been able to pass that $1k mark and am currently always stuck around $700-$800. The $6/45s are absolutely killing me. I may just drop down to the $3s and grind those until I'm rolled for the $12s and just skip the $6s all together. Cogs had a good theory saying that most the recreational players play the $6s because the $3s are too small and the $12s are too expensive. Makes sense to me. It would explain all the very questionable hands I get called down with when I shove and such.

I really don't feel like playing anymore to be completely honest. I told Carl earlier today that I might just ship him back his stake money and go back home to Albuquerque and get a regular job. I havent been able to make it as a pro poker player this month. I may be a little harsh on myself seeing as that I moved in as a losing player and am now slightly profitable, but I don't really care anymore. I've been doing lots of studying and lots of playing and I can't beat the game.

Prop bet - Day 2 // Another goal finished!

Day 2 of the prop bet was a nightmare for me. It started off really ridiculously bad but I kept my head high and grinded some pretty decent volume. I played a total of 66 games and ended the day 4 buy-ins down. -6% ROI is the finishing for Day 2. The day started with a sick ass downswing but I did a sick job of climbing back up from being like $200 down into like $50 profit. But proceeded to be donked and am now down $24. Here's a snapshot of today's graph:

So you can see where I made some decent cashes and climbed outta my swong around 30 games. I just wish it woulda continued that way and I coulda made some good profit. That's variance for ya!

Carl also didn't play any 45s at all for Day 2 so I'd like to see how his results for the remainder of the week are.

All in all I put in a total of 108 so far. I'm well on track to finishing my end of the prop bet much before the deadline which is pretty exciting. I have a total ROI of 16% for the two days combined. It's not too bad still making $1/game. If I woulda ran good on Day 2 then obv I'd be much happier but that's life. Here's my current pic for the 108 games:

Now to my next topic: I've officially played more than 1000 games in a month! After today I'm at a total of 1052 games played. This is a major step for me as like I've mentioned before I've never played more than 200 games a month before now. My next post will have some new goals in them. Until next time fishies! GL!

Finished Day 1

Well I put in 46 games today. I was going to put in more but I was too busy chillin with the guys and swimming and such. It was a good day for irl and poker stuff. Here's my finishing results for the day:


Obv I wish good luck to Carl on his Day 2 grind and hopefully I run as good on Day 2 as I ran on Day 1. Carl so far has a higher ROI than me but I have more than double his games played. I think if I can maintain a 30% for the remainder of the week than I shall do just fine. Wish me luck!

Also to sir_augusto... Get a poker blog going man! If you do that, I'll get a few games on Chess.com going with ya ;)

Prop bet - Day 1(so far)

Ok so I've only played 19 games so far today but I figured I'd blog about the going abouts of Day 1 since Carl only put in 21 games. It seems an unfair advantage to blog about Day 1 if I did it at the end of my day as I play on putting in 50+ games today and I wouldn't want to do that to Carl. I fired up a couple games early this morning around 4-5am and didn't run very well at all. It was actually quite funny as I lost some really funny flips but I'm not going to let them tilt me anymore as shit happens... Anywho, so yeah I'm blogging now since Carl and I have played just about the same amount of games.

I woke up today around 4:30pm and asked him how he was doing and he was like "Well I'm at 49% for the day". I almost shit myself as I thought I could never catch up today and was way down on myself. I fired up 12 games and managed a 5th, 4th, 2nd and a 1st which put me at an amazing 60% to take the lead so far in Day 1. I don't want to get ahead of myself as I'm going to be putting in 30 more games today before I decide to call it quits and I could easily go on a sick downswong as is usual for me. I have high hopes and I think 12 tabling is best for me atm. Here's a pic of our current stats:


Wish me luck for the rest of my Day 1 grind!

45-manner prop bet.

Tonight I spent a good time bitching about my current situation to Carl "EvertonYorkie" and vice versa. At the moment we're both majorly in the red as far as profit is concerned. He's on a much higher downswing than I am but he also has been playing higher games to compensate for his loses. We obv tilt in a very similar fashion as you can remember from my last post I played 2x $12/45s when I'm clearly not rolled for them. Anywho I'm back in a $200 downswong and that's a major chunk of my roll. Most people who say they're on a $200 downswong it's no big deal as they have $3k+ rolls so obv it's nothing to them but when your roll is $1k then obv $200 is a pretty big fooking chunk.

Anyways I got a little off track there... Carl and I were trying to come up with a way to motivate ourselves and such and he came up with a brilliant idea(as he always does cuz he's fucking brilliant, ldo) of a prop bet. The details of the prop bet are as follows:

Starting midnight EST Tuesday, June 22 we will have exactly 1 week to play 300 45-man SnGs. The buy-in does not matter as he will obviously be playing higher than me(most likely $12s and $27s). Whomever gets the highest ROI out of the 300 games wins 10% of the other player's bankroll. If a player does not finish exactly 300 games or more by 11:59pm Monday, June 29th automatically loses the bet and must ship the 10%.

Now obviously this is a killer deal for me if I can pull it off as 10% of his roll would boost my roll by 80%. I would obviously be very happy with this :D. It's actually not that great a deal for Carl as 10% of my roll is shit but it's a deal nonetheless. The moral of the whole thing is for us to forget the beats and deal with the variance while we put in some sick volume over the next week. Hopefully grinding this much will actually get me in a rhythm of playing and I can maintain it throughout my time here at the Icons mansion.

The prop bet started about an hour or so ago so I will probably get some sleep before I start my grind as I want to play with a level head. I'm also going to watch some vids and read some strat articles to make sure I'm doing the right things. Wish me luck guys!

*** UPDATE***

Cheers to leeda111! He's a micro 45-man reg who I consider to be one of my biggest helpers in the game. It's basically cuz of him that I'm a semi-profitable player at these games. Anywho he just got out of a sick downswong and ran a 76% ROI at the 45s today! Congrats m8! Keep up the good work!

GG downswong for awhile

Well my downswong had hit an all time low with 52 games and zero cashes just a couple days ago and obv I was pretty upset dropping $300 from the roll. I was so tilted and felt like a degen so fired up one last $6/45 and two $12/45s... I didn't expect to do anything as obv I hadn't cashed in the last 52. Turns out I took 4th in the $6/45 and took down both the $12s haha. GG Downswong!

It was all good until yesterday when I played another 20 games and no cashes. The variance in these are so sick. I'm once again down like $200 cuz of MTTs as well. I need to stop degening and playing outside of my roll. I had a really good run in the $3r again and was 3rd in chips with 350 left but got all in preflop with QQ against the chip leader's KJo... Obv he's the biggest fucking idiot donkey in the world for getting all in there but what can I do. He spikes his K and gg nemo.

I've been watching a few vids on CardRunners for MTTSnGs by Jackal. He's so sick imo. Awesome vids and they really motivate me to play. I also think it's funny that in both of his 45-manner vids he's playing with j0hndayt0n and BigJoe2003 so that's pretty cool. He actually busts them both out of the tourns which makes it even more interesting to me.

I'm gonna get back to my grind and try to get outta my current downswong. Hopefully I can turn things around finally. I'm due for an upswing again.

AIPF with AK Strategy // HUSNGs

This post is going to be a response to TiocfaidhArLa's blog comment as he got me really thinking about the proper ways to play AK preflop in these 45man SnGs. I've been doing some research and the general consensus is such that in these turbos, it's almost always +EV to get aipf with AK. There are obviously going to be times when you're going to make some tough laydowns with AK preflop. I'll give an example:

You're in LP looking down at AKo. Blinds are 15/30 and everybody at your table all have around the starting stack of 1500. A player in EP raises to t90, he gets min-raised by the guy directly to his left. The action folds around to the player to act before you, who then raises 3-4 times the min-raise. I would most likely find a fold here as you're almost always beat and there's no point getting it all in here as one or more of your opponents will show up with QQ+. I can see myself being completely dominated here and AKo just doesn't appeal to me as we don't have flush potential.

Now lets consider the same scenario but this time you have AKs. I would say this is an easy shove even considering the action. My theory on this is now your equity just went up that much more with AKs over AKo in this spot and unless you're up against AA, you're flipping. If he felts KK then its a race as you can now hit your three A outs, hit a straight, or hit a flush. Perhaps my strategy is flawed but in these MTTSnGs you want to build a stack as soon as possible and with AKs in this spot is the perfect way to build one or go busto and rob a liquor store.

You also need to consider the games you're playing. Right now I'm playing the $6 45s which are full of super donkeys. These guys are 3-betting really light and shoving even lighter in the early stages hoping to build a stack so they can sit back and wait for the bigger blind levels. I've played a couple $12 45s and the play is still the same in those as in the lower limits so the strategy doesn't change there either; I'm getting it in aipf! I'm not sure if I'm playing this aggressive in the $27s and the $60s but seeing as how I haven't played those yet I can't really say.

That's all for my brief attempt at 45 man turbo strategy for playing AK preflop. Now onto a more interesting topic...

After I wrote my last blog, I signed onto sharkscope (Thanks be to EY for getting me an account) and was looking at the Leaderboards and daydreaming of how bad ass it would be to be one of those guys. So I decided to look at all of them individually and noticed that all of the top 5 on the leaderboards are HUSNG players. I was immediatly intrigued by this and starting doing some research on teh Googlezzzz. I found some really awesome blogs of HUSNG players that I play on adding to my blogroll but more importantly I found incredible articles written by some of the top HUSNG players in the world regarding certain issues like BR management and basic strategy and such. I've always been fascinated with BR management discussions and such which is definitely a weird trate to have but fuck it, better to be safe than sorry right? I read about 5-6 full length articles regarding BR management for HUSNGs and think I have it down pretty good. I then researched ROI and expected variance in the games. Obviously if one is to become a husng grinder, he/she needs to be fully aware that their swings are going to be the sickest than from any other game... especially at the high stakes games. I really loved the articles on expected ROIs for the game and think that 1 tabling would probably be best. You can still get in 12 games an hour as the average run time for the turbos on Stars is around 7 mins.

Now the question is if I'm really going to grind these.. and to be completely honest I can't really say if I am or not. I think I may wait until I'm rolled for the $33s on Stars and 1 table them while I continue my 45 man grind. I did a test run today and loaded my usual 6 game session of 45s and 1 $10 HUSNG. I played a really aggressive game based on the strategy articles I had just read and crushed my first opponent who was actually a very profitable player. He declined the rematch so I fired up another one and was playing against some French fuck so obv I knew I was going to crush him as French players suck. He was terribly bad but apparently he's a top player in the $10 husngs according to Sharkscope. I didn't care, I raised every button and 3-bet him with decent hands and he would just fold. Once he would get down to 1k in chips he started shoving on me every time i would raise preflop on the button. At first I found it annoying but then I decided that I would keep doing it until I had a monster hand and trap his stupid ass. So I stuck to my strategy and kept raise/folding my button until I got KK in the hole and did it again. He obv snap-pushed like a donk and i called. He had AhJh but didn't get any help and I took down my second one. He accepted the rematch and pushed the very first hand. I looked down at AJo and folded. Very next hand I'm button with AhJh and obv open to t60 here, he instashoves again. It's quite clear he's tilting and my read on him is pretty solid imo so I call. He felts KK and starts blowing up the chat with shit like "haha justice! same hand, how does it feel donk?". I didn't say shit as obv I hit my A on the river and bust him again. He accepts my rematch again and we're on to game 3. He immediately starts blowing up the chat calling me a donk and saying some other stupid french stuff that I didn't really care for. Very first hand I'm in the bb with AA and he shoves and I obv snap. He shows K3o lmfao. Flop is K83, turn is K and I'm like foooking shit... atleast till I binked my river A ;) he obv declined my rematch and I tried to find him reg'd for another but it looked as if he signed off haha. It's always nice to tilt players like that. I'll definitely be looking for him when I grind these some more.

It was a decent small session of 4 husngs. It was also nice to take all 4 of them down relatively easy :D

Oh and as for the 45 man grind I put in.... yeah, I min-cashed in 1 out of the 6. fml when it comes to those, srsly.