$1000

This is the sum of my winnings in Pacific $10 SNGs. Unfortunately, it took me 61 games to get there :-) meaning that my net profit is $329 (yes - less than yesterday...). Still, it is a nice, round number, and I thought it deserved its own blog post.

At this point I should be going over the three SNGs that I did not cash in, to learn from it. Oh all right, but just briefly then.

1. I called an all-in early on with AK. This is basically a fair bet (there is some chance, but not much at this stage of the game, that the opponent does not have a pair but instead AK or - if you are very lucky - even less). He won with 99.
   
2. On the bubble, I went all-in, got called and lost. Can't really complain about this. The game had already gone on for quite some time, so the blinds were so high that it was just a matter of luck who got the best cards at the crucial times. (Level 200/400, my stack 1700.)
3. Forgot what happened here, and PokerOffice did not store the last hand. In the last stored hand, I eventually went all-in on KQ postflop, only to be called by KQ!

This morning I played one game and had lots of luck. Early on I got TT, raised and got called. Flop 987, opp bets 200 (just a little under the pot). I raise to 500 and he calls... The turn is a K but now I am pot committed and I raise him all-in. He flips over 77 and I have just barely enough time to realize I am lost before the river Ten appears. As I said before, it feels good to suck out...
My stack at the bubble is still quite small, but fortunately the bubble only lasts one game! Then during the phase with 3 players, I get JJ, QQ and AA in three successive rounds when I am the big blind, enabling me to take quite a few chips from him (he started with 9000 chips...). Then I also eliminate the short stack and am in quite good shape until my opponent flops a straight when I flop top pair, and that was all she wrote. But I can't complain about this game, for sure.

Form

Naturally, I like looking up myself at Sharkscope after I have just been playing well (or at least made some money ;-) ). What I saw just now is so nice, I just had to put it on my blog. Forgive me for bragging, but have a look at the "Form" column... This is the first time that column has contained anything but "-".

12:9:5

See this post for the meaning of the title :-) That's right, things continue to go great at Pacific. In my last four games, I finished first twice and was runner-up twice! Again, I am seriously considering moving up to $20 games. I will wait until the end of the month though, first I hope to get some more wins and end the month with a nice profit.

My ROI at Pacific $10 SNGs is now 55%, this is quite amazing. In the last game that I played, the other players clearly did not have a clue as to what they were doing. The blinds kept going up but they were still making flat calls preflop, and to make it even better they folded to (nearly) all my all-ins. I only needed a bit of luck near the end, when one opponent started calling my all-ins (we were already in the money), once he beat me and then I sucked out on him holding A7 vs AQ.

The funny thing is, my "saw flop %" actually went down towards the end, because I was winning all my hands preflop without opposition :-) It was 14% at one stage!

The difference between the various pokersites is quite marked. Of course the structure is also different everywhere, slightly different level lengths etc. At Party, I have not yet managed to make a profit on $10 SNGs. My overall results are as follows:

1. Pacific, 57 games, net profit $343
2. Party, 9 games, -$29
3. Titan, 25 games, -$55 (at least it took me some time to get rid of all my money... My ITM% (in the money) was actually a reasonable 32% there, I just finished 3rd too often: the ratio there was 1:3:4...)

So overall I have now played 91 games for $10 (actually $11) and made a net profit of $259 with that. That gives an overall ROI of 26%, not bad if I do say so myself :-)

This is obvious, but it certainly is a lot more fun to write new blog posts when you're winning... Of course it is when you're losing that you should actually be writing about your play, or at least analyzing it. Indeed, when I originally started this blog it was mostly to write down my mistakes (as you can see from some early posts, I think) and hope to learn from them and the public embarrassment ;-) Doesn't really seem to work out like that so far, but I am not complaining!

Steps not for me?

I tried the Party Steps once again, without much luck. In my last Step 2 game, I raised preflop with 99 and got reraised by an early limper - but he did not go all-in, otherwise I would have felt sure he had AA. After much agonizing I decided to call, only to have him flip up A8 (???), and get an 8 on the flop and another one on the river. What can you do?

I had managed to survive long enough to at least get a Step 1 ticket again, so I entered it immediately. Things did not go so well and I still had 1900 when the level was already 50/100. As BB, I got KQs. There was a limp and a raise in front of me (to 300) and I decided to call, as did the limper. The flop was K63, the pot was now already 950 and I had 1610 left in my stack. I decided to go all-in... and got called by the raiser, who held the fantastic hand A2, with the Ace of clubs. Clearly somebody who never heard about pot odds.

Now you're probably thinking he made his flush. No no, the poker gods had thought of something much funnier. First there was a 4 on the turn and then there was a 5 on the river...

What do you think about my play here?

This put me down to 518, and though I doubled up on the next hand with K9 which got called by Q5s (but they were sooooooted!), I never really recovered from this. I hovered around 1200 chips until I lost a race with AJ against 33 - it was the same guy from before - I would like to actually criticize his decision, but due to a limper behind him the pot at this moment was already 1800 and he only had to call 900, so he was in this case getting quite good odds, or at least reasonable ones.

Fortunately, when I got booted from the Step 2 game I had also registered for a $10 SNG at Pacific, and made it to 2nd place there - I might have made first had it not been for yet another runner-runner-straight when I was ahead.

I had a look at my profits for the month, grouped by site, and discovered that I made a profit of $100 (!) at Pacific. If only I had played there exclusively, the month might have looked a bit better overall - my overall profit for the month is a grand $7.87 at the moment. This is my worst result since I bought the Harrington books. Still, the month is not quite over yet!

420 to 12000

I tell you, it certainly feels better to be the one who is sucking out for a change...

In my last game, I started off rather speculatively and soon dropped to 635 chips. I managed to win a bit back by going all-in as BB with A8s after four limpers. However, shortly after that I got AK, raised and got one caller who was very shortstacked. The flop was QQJ and my opponent went all-in, I had no choice but to call due to pot odds. Turns out he had A3... but they were spades, as well as two of the cards on the table, and the turn. This put me down to 420!

On the very next hand, I got KK and raised to 3BB = 120. Everyone folded :-/ Perhaps in the bad state I was in, I should have just limped and hoped for the best.

Next time I was BB I again got AK! UTG minraised after everyone folded and SB went all-in, he had me covered (obviously...) I assumed that this was my best shot at getting back into the game and called. He had 88 and I was down and out until the river K - first suckout. (Although of course, preflop my call was perfectly acceptable.) Back to 1030!

I dropped 44 after an early raise. Then as SB, stack down to 905, level 50/100, I went all-in after there was just one caller, both players fold. Then I get 44 again, this time in 2nd position. I go all-in and everyone folds. On the next hand I get KK! I go all-in again, hoping for a call this time, but no luck. 1300. QJ as BB, I see a cheap flop Jxx. All-in again and all three opponents fold. 1605!

On the next hand, I get AJ as SB and go all-in after only UTG calls. (Perhaps all-in was slightly over the top here, I guess I had not adjusted to my suddenly large stack in relation to the blinds.) UTG calls with KQ and gets rewarded by a King on the flop (suckout)... but the turn is an Ace (resuck!) :-) Now I have 3310, up from 1055 four hands ago... Suddenly I am chip leader.

Then the funniest hand of the game happens when I pick up 27 as BB, noone raises and the flop comes 752. Only one opponent in middle position is left and I check to him. The level is now 75/150. He duly obliges by raising to 450. After a brief thought (don't want to overdo it) I call, and check the river J. Now he raises 600! Leaving only 1800 in his stack. This makes me a bit worried that he might have 55 in his hand, but I decide to make my move and raise to 1200. He just calls (no 55, I guess!) and the river is a 4. There is a very small chance of a straight here, but I go all-in and he calls. And what kind of monster hand did he have? ... 87s. That's right, the incredible top pair (well, medium pair after the turn) strikes again! This brings me up to 6575.

Soon we are down to 3 players, and I get lucky when the short stack wins an all-in confrontation against nr.2 and then immediately goes all-in on 88 against my 99! This only leaves a very short stack (1100) as my opponent, and I believe the game only lasted one more hand.

Try, and try again

As you may have been able to tell from the frequency and content of my last few posts, the poker gods have not been kind to me recently. I now have an overall loss for the month of July of $15, after being $70 up at one point!

Some more examples: there was one game where I ran first KK and then QQ into AA (the first event did not quite finish me off). Then there was a game where I ran QQ into JJ *and* AA at the same time, and the board not only contained an ace but also a jack for good measure.

I called an all-in of a short stack when I held 99, he had A6 and everything was fine until the river ace.

On the first hand of a game, I got TT and played it perfectly, and I do mean perfectly. I raised to 100 = 5BB PF (I was in early position), got three callers. Flop was Txx with two diamonds. I bet half the pot (200) to chase away flush draws. This does not quite work as the guy with the flush draw (AQd) instead decides to go all-in and of course makes his flush on the very next card. Sure, he had overcards, and he could not know that I held three of a kind, but even if I didn't I don't think he was favorite to win that hand.

Then very early in the next game, I got AA. There was a fairly big raise and a call in front of me, so I just went all-in immediately, though with heavy misgivings - it would not surprise me if I lost that game similar to the TT just before. Anyway, so the first raiser actually called... with 54 offsuit... got a 5 on the flop... and a 4 on the turn. Fortunately, there had also been an Ace on the flop and there were no further fives or fours on the river!

Twice yesterday, I was way ahead of somebody until they made a runner-runner four flush on the board. The second time, I was fortunate enough to have just made the money, so it was not a complete loss overall. Actually in that game, for the first time ever I think, I got AA three times in one sit and go. And I won all three hands (one of them is described above), but the second and third time I only made small profits. Indeed, one of them was in the BB and it almost looked like the hand was going to be folded round to me at one point, until the SB decided to take a shot.

So anyway, to sum it all up, I believe that I am playing reasonably, just not getting rewarded for it. You always know that there are going to be phases like that, but that does not make it easier to accept.

Mission accomplished

Warning: multiple bad beat story. Not for the fainthearted.


I have succeeded in losing all my money on Titan for the third time. I cannot beat these people. I have now removed the Titan software from my computer. My total losses at Titan are now $130. Some examples:

raise with JJ, I get reraised. With some misgivings, fearing a higher pair, I go all-in and get called ... by K8s ..., K on flop, and another K on the river for good measure

raise with 88, one caller. Flop J63 and he goes all-in on a short stack. I do not believe him and call and he shows ... A4. Turn 5, river 2.

raise with TT, one caller who is a calling station, I have observed him calling with nothing. Flop Qxx, he checks and I bet. He raises me... of course, THIS time he has QQ in his hand.

After my last loss, I had $2.40 left so I joined a $0.05/0.10 cash table to throw away my last money. The very first hand, I get J9 (I paid the BB to play immediately) and the flop is KJ9. Because of the danger of a straight (and a flush, there were 2 diamonds), I raise big after two callers. One caller remains, he check-raises me on the turn. I happily call and the river is another K. I know what you're thinking, he probably had K2.

No.

He had K9.

Back to my home at Pacific for me!

Chaos

My playing history at Titan...

90 cents

This is my overall net profit at Titan right now... Given that it was -$38.10 before I made my latest attempt at a $10 SNG, I cannot complain about this!

That's right, at long last I managed to not only make the money, but actually win a $10 SNG at Titan. After all the trouble I had in recent days, this game was surprisingly easy. I got a few good hands early on and actually managed to make the most of them.

The best one was the following. I raise with KQ preflop (I think I was UTG), one caller. I miss the flop which is Jxx and make a continuation bet. He calls again and I curse my luck until a queen hits the turn. I feel that I must be ahead here (not to mention the fact that I am quite upset at his nerve of calling my bluff) and go all-in. After some thought, he calls... he had Q8!! Don't ask me what he was thinking when he called preflop and on the flop - or on the turn, for that matter.

I had some difficulty winning the heads-up phase, after my opponent hit an unlikely runner-runner flush to take the lead from me (I was 2:1 up, so after that 2:1 down). However, ten hands later or so, he refuses to believe that I hit top pair and calls my all-in bet. This leaves him with only 2000 chips (I had already crept up on him a bit) and then the rest was a formality. Although the end was interesting: preflop he raised to 2BB = 600, leaving only 1400 in his stack, but then he refused to call my reraise! Then on the next hand, I just put him all-in with 96 or so, and the flop came T96 ;-)

Just before this, I also managed to win a $10 SNG at Pacific, where I had fled because of my continuing bad results. These two successive wins have wiped out the losses that I made this week playing double stack games. At the moment, my profit this month stands at $63. I am just happy to be back in the black for the month...

Titan double stack tournaments: don't play them

At least not until you learn how to play poker.

Why must I lose to these idiots!

(based on what Aaron Nimzowitsch said after losing a chess game...)

Game 1: 56s, call to see cheap flop 568. Raise before me, I reraise big to avoid the straight. He calls anyway, turn 3. I go all-in, he calls again, he has T8 and the river is a T.

Game 2: KQ, I call a minraise as does an idiot with K8 behind me. I hit top pair and start betting. He keeps calling until the river which is an 8.

I am now DOWN $13 at Titan... I just cannot believe it, it really seems like this happens to me every time I deposit money at Titan. Surely they can't KEEP hitting their five- and three-outers!

Yet another second place

After a heads-up phase of 30 games, where I started about 2:1 behind, I got JJ at the same time as my opponent got AA........

Still, I need to remember that I only got this far because when there were three players left, my AT beat the short stack's KK.

Earlier tonight my A9 was beaten by KT (I was about 56% favorite) and my AK ran into AA.

Before that I ran JJ into QQ: I raised to 160 = 4BB and the BB reraised me to 520 (stack 1300). I went all-in over the top. It is again my old problem of not taking reraises seriously.

My overall net profit at the $10 games at Titan is now a beautiful $0... Three second places and one third place make for exactly $110 in 10 games. Overall at Titan I am still $9 up since my deposit. It is really not going at all the way that I planned! Also, the players that reach the payout unfortunately appear to know what they are doing more often than not. I need to check some of them out in Sharkscope.

...Yep, both opponents that were left at the end of my most recent game had an ROI of a staggering 100%!! This was only over about 10 games or so for both of them, but still... I guess this structure attracts the good players. Maybe I should play the regular structure after all? More luck will be involved, but also more bad players...

Net profit over the last two days: $1

That's right, for all my trouble I was rewarded by a lousy dollar! The result of one third place and one seventh place (raise to 3BB with QQ - idiot with A8 puts me all-in - I am happy to call - A on flop) in double stack tournaments, one 5th place in a $5 jackpot game, and a third place at Pacific when I couldn't log in to Titan for some reason.

I suppose I should not complain as long as I am still making a profit :-)

For all my praises regarding the double stack tournaments, I have yet to win one. Just now I had another long phase with 3 players, then I guess I lost my patience and went all-in OTB on K5o (my M was still 10 but about to decrease), only to be called by 88. Overall I have now made a profit of only $3 at the $10 tournaments at Titan! (This includes several single stack tournaments where I did not finish in the money.) Still, I suppose that I am learning from these slow games.

My overall profit at Titan has actually gone down to $17.50 now. Seems I still have a long way to go to make up for my losses here. I thought I would just quickly win a few $10 SNGs, but it does not seem to work out that way. Oh well, try and try again...

My overall results in $10 games remain encouraging:
Site games profit
Titan 7 $3
Party 4 -$13
Pacific 45 $215
Total 56 $205
Average ROI 33%

It used to be higher of course, but an ROI like that is not to be sneezed at I think, and certainly nothing to complain about! I could probably play better at Titan if I restricted myself to a single table. I have taken to multi-tabling since sometimes you have to wait quite a while before a double stack game starts. Of course, whenever I start a second game I immediately get notified that the double stack game is ready to start now...

Titan double stack tournaments

I can recommend them to everyone!

Starting with a stack of 3000 and blinds at 10/20, the blinds increase (only) every 10 minutes making for a lot of play possibilities. I have now played three of them and finished 2nd twice. One of those was against a complete idiot who I did not manage to shake off in 22 heads-up games and who eventually turned a straight at the same moment that I turned two pair. The other one was against quite a good player who has an ROI of 11% at Titan. Though I managed to get 2:1 up against him at one point, he recovered on the next game with AJ vs my A7 and eventually beat my KJ with A7 (I think it was).

In the game that I lost, I got it all-in preflop with JJ vs 66 and a 6 appeared on the turn, so I cannot complain about that. Well, I can, but at least I played well in that game, I think. Anyway, this means that my ROI at these games is about 80% for the moment :-)

In the two regular $11 games, I did not finish in the money. (In one of them, I lost with top pair strong kicker when my opponent caught two pair on the river.) I also played some $5 games and actually managed to win one jackpot game, but did not finish in the money on the next one. (I think it was in one of these games that I again lost with a pair against a smaller pair - the second time in one day!) Overall I have now made a profit of $25 at Titan since putting in my latest deposit. I will be quite happy when I manage to erase the rest of the $80 loss that I made there (even though it is not as significant as it used to be).

I don't think I will be playing much at Pacific anymore from now on. Perhaps if I can't find opponents at Titan (it took some time this morning). I cashed out about half of my bankroll at the sites that I play, and am going to focus on playing these double stack games at Titan for the moment. They are not offered below the $10 level, I guess people at those levels are more likely to prefer the super turbo games rather than the slow double stack games...

Played my first game at Titan

Since March, anyway... I decided to start off easy and play in a $5.50 SNG. I had forgotten that playing in the jackpot games costs more fee ($1). I finished second! The quality of the opposition was indeed very poor. I can honestly say that my opponent got lucky at the end. Next time I will try a $11 SNG.

The speed of play is very relaxed, you have 10 minutes per level. I never really liked the speed at Pacific. They have an oddball system where you play 10 games at each blinds level. This means that as players leave, the level increases at an ever higher rate! I got used to it I guess, but it is nice to play at a more relaxed speed again. I hope my results will also benefit.

Today I lost three $11 SNGs at Pacific. The last time I was simply unfocused (did not realize I still had 2 opponents instead of 1 on the river...), before that I went all-in with 99 (M=8) and got called by TT. I have been thinking about that move ever since. I was in early position, so there was of course always a risk that somebody would wake up with a better hand after me. I guess I will go and read the discussions that Mark linked about playing middle pairs in the middle stages of SNGs. It is always difficult.

I also tried a $11 MTT at Party with no luck. Although I got a lot of pocket pairs (I think 6 in the first half hour), and made a nice profit off of some of them, I did not manage to survive the first hour. I simply did not play well, should have been more patient when I had built up the large stack. Too bad. For what it's worth, the level of the opposition did not seem to be very different from the $5 level.

9:6:3

This is my current ratio of first to second to third place finishes in $10 SNGs at Pacific :-) Looks nice, doesn't it? I have played 41 such games in total now.

Found out something interesting tonight: Sharkscope also has a live tournament selector. At first, I thought that this was "just" an overview of average strengths of opponents at various levels and poker sites. However, seeing amounts of players like "3/6" confused me and finally it dawned on me what was meant with the word live here. That's right, before you register for some SNG you can go and look at Sharkscope to see what the level of your opposition will be!

Of course, you need to catch the right time window. Some players need to have already registered, but if say 6 players have already registered, you run the risk that by the time you have checked out your opponents the table will be full. Still, could be a useful feature, especially if I move up to $20 at some point. (At that level, it costs you 3 of the 5 free searches to use the tournament selector, at the level of $10 and below it is free.)

I am also thinking about putting some money into Titan again. Mark today writes that he has now officially left Stars for Titan. Pokerlistings is down at the moment, but I believe they ranks Titan as being even easier (#1 on the list of easy-to-win poker sites!) than Pacific (#6). I am quite wary of putting any more money into Titan though. I have lost $80 in total by playing there. Funny,only as I write it do I realize that this means far less to me now than it did when I lost that money :-) Now, I "only" have to win 2 SNGs to make up for this loss!

When I lost that money, I really did not know what I was doing. Through some sort of miracle, I did actually manage to win four of their jackpot games in a row, one more would have brought me $20,000. Of course I went out in 7th place or so. It is quite tempting to play these games again, even if the jackpot remains very hard to reach of course.

Almost forgot, I also played in a large shootout tournament at Party tonight. I never played such a game before, it has quite a funny structure. You start at one table and continue playing there until exactly 3 players are left. Then you wait. When all tables have only 3 players, all remaining players are moved to full tables again and a new round starts. In each round, you get paid if you finish in the top 3! So you get some intermediate prizes and do not go home with nothing if you are kicked out after playing for 3 hours.

However, I do not think that I will play in such a shootout again. It was fun to do once but I had to wait a long time for the second round (my table had an especially large amount of idiots who were racing each other to give all their chips to me as fast as possible, I ended up with 16,000 chips after starting with 3,000). I'm almost glad I did not make it to the third round, it would have made for a very late night here... Eventually I made a net profit of $5.07 on this game, after two hours! I also did not like the fact that the blinds were very high by the time the second round started. My M was 10 and I was chip leader! I managed to survive a couple of rounds, but I ran into KK first and later AA finished me off.

50%

Not much news to report... The games seem to be playing themselves more and more. The nice thing about studying a bit of poker theory and reading some Harrington is that you have far less to think about during a game. There are so many standard situations. Two players call and I am SB? Call with any two cards (I nearly have the right odds, plus some implied odds when I hit). Flop is folded around to me? Bet with anything unless there are too many opponents or the board looks like somebody might be slowplaying. Short stack goes all-in in front of me and I have a nice pair/AK/AQ? Go all-in over the top to prevent people from calling behind me.

I suppose writing all this in a public place could theoretically be a disadvantage if people start to take advantage of the way I play. But since I am not doing anything special and basically just using some tricks I learned from a book, I do not think there is much danger of that. The things I write above are not new and anyone could find out about them by reading a bit.

It just seems that many people don't bother before they sit down to play. Well, I cannot complain about that...

Results of June

I made a net profit of $187 in June, not as good as May but still quite nice :-) I also like the way my profile looks at Sharkscope at the moment:
Regarding the $10 SNGs, I now have 7 8 wins, 5 second places and 3 third places. It is interesting that when I reach the last three, almost 50% of the time I finish first. I think I have an advantage when there are only two players left because I can often resort to using the near-optimal system SAGE whereas my opponents more often than not seem to have no idea what to do. I am not quite sure why I rarely finish third. One reason could be that I have already collected a large amount of chips, but this is clearly not always the case. Perhaps the other players are more nervous at this stage, I don't know.

Anyway, for the moment I will definitely stick to playing the $10 SNGs. Yesterday I played a $5 MTT at Pacific and finished 16th for a net profit of $1.30. I think I am not going to play these anymore. With only 100-200 players, it is not really worth the effort: I spent 2.5 hours on this! In the future I will sooner try these MTTs at Party, where they seem to be quite a bit larger and also the levels are slower (15 minutes) which I hope would help me.

PS: number of wins updated on July 2nd :-) ROI on the $10 games is now 46%. I wonder how long I can keep this up.