The Grinding Dragon

I finally took my first step into live cash games (not including micro stakes home games) at our local casino here in Sydney last night. Considering I am primarily a LHE online player and only dabble in NLHE for the odd tourney or home game, sitting at a NLHE table that is bigger than any stake i had played in NLHE previously was quite a daunting concept.

Thankfully I spent some time during the week going over videos from Tubasteve and other coachs such as Baby Steps, Memoirs of a Limidonk, From the Ground Up etc. When it actually came time for me to sit, I felt a lot more comfortable than I expected and actually suprised myself at how I played. I must yet again give a shout out to DC and say a big THANKS for making such great minds available to the DC community. If it wasn't for the knowledge I have gained in my time here at DC I am certain last night would have gone a lot different, if I ever had the courage to sit at the table in the first place that is :) .

Only once did I get my money in bad, but did have a heap of outs (TPGK with open ended straight draw vs set), other than that hiccup I always got my money in good and made some pretty good laydowns that I know I probably would have not been able to make several months ago. I am pretty sure the results speak for themselves when I cashed out for close to 5 buyins after playing for around 6hrs with only the one initial buyin and really not getting too many good cards in that time either. Just played smart and chose my spots to pick up pots carefully. Not bad for a first attempt :)

Although when I think about it, they never really stood a chance considering I was wearing my magic run good DC hoodie at the time of playing. I also have to give props to the hoodie for the roulette bet on the way out, $5 straight up on lucky number 13 while wearing the DC hoodie and...........BOOM!!! Thank you sir, and see ya later :)

I have been experimenting with my new photography gear and thought I would have a little fun with photoshop this afternoon.

This is my subliminal shout out to DC :)

Hope you like it.

 

Not much to say, pretty sure the pics speak for themselves :)

Was a  great night with plenty of LOLs and plenty of drinks.

Will be great to do this again, hopefully everyone that missed this one will be able to make the next.

A special mention has to go to Shuttle for making the effort and coming up from Melbourne. Thanks mate, I hope it was worth the trip for you :)

 

I had to include the obligitory pic of pockets

:)

 

Left to right, Shuttle who made the trip from Melbourne with PokerGnome getting ready to deal

WhiteHeatSyd and Shuttle putting on their best "Honest, I'm sober" faces

:)

Pretty sure I am saying WTF do you mean how do you play LHE :) , DiggerTheDog is on the far right and Pink Dragons "chip rack" making a sneaky appearance ;)

 

The infamous rigged IMHO hand :)
Blinds 25/50, PokerGnome raises UTG to 150, Pink Dragon shoves in CO for 825 and PG calls.
PG turns over QQ Pink turns AA, flop gives top set to PG with straight draw to Pink.
Turn is a blank and Pink hits the case A on the river to take the pot and a lot of LOLs and calls that the game is Rigged :p
Shuttle was nice enough to highlight the  fact as seen in the third pic of the series :)

Hmm rubbing the neck, that's a pacifying tell if I'm not mistaken, you haven't just coped a beat have you?

 

Ohhh now I see why the neck rub :)

 

Shuttle telling us what he thinks of the hand "RIGGED IMHO"

 

Thanks to DiggerTheDog for the shout, this is where things started getting interesting :) :p

This is where it got interesting

 

I seem to be facing a crossroad at the moment and would really be interested in getting some opinions/views on it. 

If you have read my latest blog, I have come to the realisation that if I keep going at the rate I am it is going to take me pretty much 6 years before I can consider reaching my target of trying to go pro, and that is after I finally get up to playing 5/10, which is probably going to take a minimum of 1-2 years alone. So it pretty much goes without saying that this is not a time frame I am happy with. TBH I would love to go pro tomorrow but I know that is really not possible and kinda stupid to even try. 

After a few responses to my previous blog, it got me thinking, reading a lot of previous forum threads and crunching some numbers over night. For me to, in reality, play 5/10 LHE and make a living from it, I would really need to be playing 4 tables to make it possible. That is assuming I can maintain a moderate winrate of 1BB/100 and would see on avg about 100hands/table/hour so would equal approx $40/hr winrate (not including rake). 

I use to play 2-4 tables when I was chasing bonuses etc and playing the micro stakes NLHE and LHE (<0.05/0.10). But to be honest, and it is VERY obvious in my DB, my game was crap when I was doing this. I never really learnt to play and think, if anything, my game went backwards, which is interesting considering it was already at the bottom :p . This is why I am now resistant to the fact of going back to playing more than one table. Since I have been getting coaching and concentrating on one table at a time I have found my game has developed immensely and my profits have reflected this. However even though my BB/100 is increasing and now showing good results over a good sample, my actual hourly winrate is nowhere near where I need it to be to make my targets a reality. 

I would really be interested to hear from others that have recently been through a similar transition, single table to multiple table sessions. Now I know that the number of tables you decide to play is very subjective and that it changes a lot from person to person, and that this debate has raged for years, and if I search the forums I will find threads etc etc etc. But it’s my blog and that’s why I am writing it here and not the forums, so don’t bother with the standard “use the search” responses please. What I was after is opinions on what people felt was the biggest differences between single and multi tabling that you found. Did you find your winrate drop substantially over a good sample? Did your hourly rate increase enough to compensate for this? And just your general views/opinions you found between the two. If you have already posted something similar on DC or in your blog, or for that matter if you know of someone else’s blog or thread that conveys similar thoughts to yours, please feel free to just forward me a link. 

What I am considering for my next move is to drop back down to say 0.05/0.10 – 0.10/0.20 for 10k hands and try playing 2-4 tables to see what happens. I know it isn’t a fair comparison because the play is different between the stakes etc, but I don’t want to risk my BR ‘experimenting’ at my regular .50/1 – 1/2 games. The fact that I will be 2-4 tabling means that it shouldn’t actually take that long to play 10k hands (about 2 weeks if I get my 2hrs/night playing 4 tables) as I should be seeing almost 4 times as many as I do now. And let’s face it, I’ve got nothing to lose really as far as the time spent goes. The biggest thing I notice that suffers when I start adding more tables, is the note taking, it basically becomes non-existent, but I will see if I can compensate for this by spending a bit more time doing session reviews and adding notes after sessions in HEM. 

Well here goes nothing, I will make sure to keep things updated here.

Well that sux! I can’t believe it has taken me this long to do the proper maths on this. It is no secret to anyone that has spoken to me for more than 2 minutes that my one aim is to be able to play poker professionally one day. Even if it is a 6 month shot that doesn’t work out. I just want to say that I have done it at some point in my life. If I am one of the lucky few that it works out for then that’s great, but I will deal with those sort of issues when the time comes. 

I have decided that for me to take a shot at this for atleast 6 months I will need to supplement my regular weekly income of about 2k plus allow about 1000BB poker only portion for my BR, that’s 60k (2k x 24weeks + 10k) I need to clear before taking a shot. I figure that a slightly above avg winrate at 5/10 should be enough to allow me to live off the profits while still building my poker BR slightly. And yes I know that a lot of people will not agree with the above figures, but they are only rough guesstimates to give me an idea of what I am looking at. At the moment I am playing about 10hrs per week around my normal 925er, family and kids.

So even if I can somehow find my way from the 0.50/1 – 1/2 stakes that I am playing now to 5/10, and have an exceptional winrate of 2BB/100 at that level, it is going to take me almost 6 years to get the 60k together to be able to take a shot at playing full time. Keep in mind I am one of those nits that still only single tables ;) this means that on avg I get about 100hands/hr.

So as I said at the beginning, That Sux! I guess I am either going to have to win the lotto, or a semi-good buyin tournament (of which both are as likely as each other :p ). I have no idea how you guys get the scratch together to be able to start playing full time in the first place. Only thing I can assume is that a lot of people are playing below their BR when they first start.

Oh well, guess it’s back to the grind and dreams, maybe one day I might get lucky. Gonna have to dig up some DC tourney vids and see what we can get going.

I got a very pleasant suprise last night whilst looking through my HEM stats. I have not looked at them for a while and was quite pleased with what I found.

Before anyone gives me the lecture of “Can’t win without looking at your stats blah blah blah” let me just explain myself. Since November last year I have been taking the game and the prospects it can offer a whole lot more seriously. This also was about the time that things really started to click with me in terms of understanding the game etc, understanding exactly how to apply what I had been learning in the DC forums and videos and all the concepts that I had discussed in coaching sessions with PygmyHero. I finally felt confident at the table and felt like I had a shot at beating the game. Up until that point I had been a break even player that understood slightly more than the fish, atleast enough to be slightly profitable after my rakeback. Certainly no where near what I would class as a winning player.

I really buckled down and spent a lot of time drilling through my stats trying to find leaks etc. But I found as time went on, I was tending to more and more be concerned over the $ value of the hand rather than taking a neutral look and studying the play of the hand regardless of the outcome. This started to impact on my game and I found myself chasing losses and playing my C- game more often. I decided to take some time away from my stats, play with no HUD, and just concentrate on each session in isolation (I still used my notes on players at FTP) regardless of what BB/100 was and regardless of what cashier window looked like.

I found by doing this I was thinking so much more about the game at hand, so much more about each hand at the moment of playing it and not just thinking that I can review it later. And well I finally looked at my stats last night, mainly out of curiosity over everyones stats after the Small Stakes LHE homegame the other day, and to my delight over the last 10k hands with no stats for the first time ever in my poker career I AM A WINNING PLAYER. I am beating .25/.50 LHE at approx 1.5BB/100, now I know 10k isnt a big sample and I know 1.5BB/100 isnt a huge winrate but this is the first time in my 8-9 year poker career that I am actually showing a profit before rakeback over such a large sample size.

So after 9 years of being the fish, within less then 12 months DC and PygmyHero have transformed me into a winning player. To the team at DC I say thankyou for putting together a fantastic site with such great coaches. I hope that you guys are going to be around for many years to come, cause without you I would not have been able to find PygmyHero and would never have turned my game around. And to PygmyHero, mate, I don’t have any words to describe the gratetude I have for you. If it was not for your guidance I know I would still be squandering around in the .05/.10 LHE FR fishtanks. If anyone wants proof that coaching works, well if PygmyHero can turn me into a winning player, than he can do it to anyone.

Keep up the good work guys, I know that in time I will be getting to where I want. Phase 1 complete, onto phase 2 ;p

Ok so I have finally come up with my targets for 2010.
I have spent the last few weeks thinking long and hard about them and thinking about what is going to be the best +EV targets for me to reach for.
Most of my target are aimed at improving my LHE game to allow me to start getting out of the micro/small stakes and start moving to the small/mid stakes games. My long term target is to eventually take on poker full time so my short term targets are aimed at helping me create a strong basis to work up from.

I have also come up with a few other poker related targets that I would like to meet this year that I will include at the bottom.

Ok so here are my LHE targets for 2010 (in no particular order of importance):

- Spend a minumum of 3hrs/day dedicated to poker only. At least 2hrs of this is to be spent playing online. The other hour can be spent reading forums, books etc, reviewing HHs, watching videos etc. This time is to be free from distractions, no iphone, no MSN, no surfing the intertubes etc.

- Spend time at the end of each week going through all HHs from that week. I currently am only single tabling as I find it to be much more +EV for my game. As such I am only playing about 1000 hands a week, therefore I should be able to sit down rather quickly go through the hands from the past week and study them. This time can be part of the dedicated 3hrs/day as per the above target.

- Move back up to .50/1 when I reach 300BB @ .50/1 or $300 BR. This is the lower limit of where I want my BR before moving up. I am able to take a shot at moving up and if it doesn’t work I can drop 50BB and still be over rolled for .25/.50 with 500BB or $250

- Take shots at 1/2 when BR reachs 200BB or $400. Similar to above this is the lower limit of my BR before I will take shots at 1/2. And again it still leaves me some good breathing room that if I take a shot and it doesn’t work, my BR will still be fine to drop back to .50/1 and grind back up. 200BB is underolled for 1/2 but my goal is to move up the levels as soon as possible, and taking shots will let me do this. I have set my stop loss at 50BB of the higher level which I know is not much for a downswing but I feel it is sufficent when taking a shot. Either I move up and the shot works, or I lose the 50BB and move down to re-grind.

- Resume my regular coaching sessions with PygmyHero. Now that work has settled down, I have the time again to fit in these sessions which I know have had a huge +EV effect on my game. Big props to you PH, I owe you a tonne of thx!

- Play live LHE at casino. Unfortunately this will require a roadtrip cause I live in Sydney, Australia and StarCity are retarded. Unless it is NLHE or PLO, they just stare at you blankly like you talking a forgein language when you enquire about another game. So I will be saving a bit to the side and making a roadtrip to Melbourne for a few live sessions of 2/4 – 5/10 LHE through the year. I just hope that the rule of thumb of live LHE is equal to approx 10x online stakes, oherwise my first road trip might be the last for a while :p.

Ok as for other poker targets for 2010 (again in no order):
- Play 1 major live event (prob going to have ot be NLHE)
- Get backed into 1 major live event (can be the same as the above)
- Cash in 1 major live event (can be same as above 2)
- Play in a live teams event with my wife
- Establish a reasonable +ROI in >$5 SNG

Ok well that is it for the moment. I know there are a few targets in there that some people will think are a bit random or just plain stupid but I have thought long and hard about them and I feel they wil be the most +EV targets for me for 2010. The ‘other targets’ are more for a bit of fun in order to change things up a little so that I don’t get bored with grinding day in, day out. However all the LHE targets take priority of the other targets as they are they to establish a good base for me to build towards playing full time.

If you have any comments you want to offer, please feel free as I would be interested to get some feed back on these.

Cheers

Well unfortunatley my holidays are over and it is back to reality today.

I was in the office for no more than 15 minutes, before I started thinking how much I hated this place and how much I would prefer to be at home grinding the small stakes LHE tables lol. Such is life.

So now that I am back to the apparent ‘norm’ that is my life I will be posting up my targets for the coming months/year of 2010. I am more determined than ever to make some great tracks this year and really set my sites on playing poker full time and not just as a side thing.

I am turing 30 this year and figure what better way to celebrate such a milestone by making some huge changes for the better in my life.

Read a great saying the other day, I cant remember it word for word but my own version still gives the same message. “No one ever moved forward by constantly looking back. The past is the past and cannot be changed, glance at it, learn from it, but don’t spend all your time concentrating on it. To move forward successfully, we must look where we are going, not where we have been.”. 2010 is going to be my year, there are big things ahead for me this year, things I am going to make happen. We get to do this thing called life only once and I have already wasted enough of it. It is time I took control and made my life something to enjoy.

Wow! Hectic!

That’s the only way I can describe my life over the best part of the last 4-5 months. I work for the one of the major Energy networks here in Oz and we were told by the government that over the next 5 years we have to spend $8.5 billion. This effectivly means we have to double if not triple our work load, oh and by the way we aren’t gonna let you hire any more engineers. Ahh you gotta love those 60-70 hour weeks sigh.

Anyway, now that things have settled down a fair bit and I am working a more ‘kinder’ 50hr week I have finally got a few hours to myself that I can dedicate to poker. So here we go again, fingers crossed this time nothing gets in my way.

I am going to be starting my HEM reports from the 1/11/2009, because I am playing so much better and different to what I was prior to this time. While I wasn’t able to play any poker other than the odd home game during the last few months, I was able to read forums on my iPhone during meetings, read ebooks, listen to pod casts and read the occasion page from books. I have also spent A LOT of time just thinking of hands, thinking of lines in particualar positions etc. And it has also given me a well earned break to be able to step back and have a good look at how I was playing, how I was thinking about and approaching the game. Since starting to play again (albeit only single tabling 1 or 2 nights a week)I have found my approach to the game has changed A LOT. I am much more confident in my reads and I have found that I am taking lines more confidently and knowing where I stand in a hand much more often and most importantly, I am correct in these reads more often.

I have found that a lot of the stuff I had previously talked to PygmyHero about during our sessions was coming back to me, and was a lot clearer and made so much more sense. I really feel good about my game at the moment and can see 2010 is gonna be a big year. I have a few goals that I wish to achieve over the next 6 months and once I have sorted them out in realistic terms I will post them up here hopefully in the next few days.

Keep tuned cause 2010 is gonna be a big year for me, and I would love you all along for the ride.

aus

Over the next few days I am going to post up my new targets. I have set them in an attempt to make something out of my poker career (or lack there of ATM). I am hoping to make it to Vegas next year and pay for it from my roll, so here goes nothing.