How far will $50 get me? – Page 3

_Anonymous_ · 2011-05-28T13:22:31Z

Hi everyone. I've tried blogging on here before, and when I managed to keep it up found that it encouraged me to keep my discipline, so thought I'd give it another go. I've been away for a little while, had some stuff going on in real life, had to cash out my bankroll last November, and I've not had the time or money to play poker for the last 6 months. Things are finally starting to settle down in my personal life, so I've decided to get back involved with poker, and I've deposited $50 onto Pokerstars. When I started around this time last year with my original $50 from Poker Strategy, I managed to run it upto around $500 over the course of the summer, mainly playing SSS before switching over to the $2.20 180-man turbos on Pokerstars. Although I've not been playing poker since last November, I've continued learning about it. I've kept up my subscription to Poker Player magazine, as well as keeping up with a few podcasts and forums. I'm hoping this will mean I'm not too rusty after such a long break. My plan is a fairly simple one: I'm going to be sticking to MTT SNGs, initially the $2.50 180s and the $3.50 45s on Pokerstars. The 180s are where I made most of my money before, so I'm hoping they'll continue to be good to me, and I'm including the 45s in an attempt to even out the variance a little bit. I know it's not exactly ideal bankroll management to be playing these games with only a $50 bankroll, but I've never had much success in STTs or cash games, so I think this is definately the way to go. Worst case scenario I lose my $50 and have to depsosit another $50, which wouldn't be the end of the world. I don't plan on moving up to the $8 180s until my bankroll reaches $1000, so I do plan to take the bankroll management seriously once I get past the early stages. Lastly, a little bit of background about me: I'm 28, from Peterborough, and I'm a full time IT student. I'll be starting the third year of my degree in September, but until then I'm basically a man of leisure. I've got two kids who live with me half the time, so I live a double life where half the week I'm a stressed out single parent, and the other half I'm a lazy student with plenty of time for poker... And that's about it. I started playing again earlier in the week, so I'll get on with my first progress update now. At this stage, my plan is to update this blog once a week, as I was never any good at updating after every session.

_Anonymous_ Topic starter

09.07.2011, 23:06 0

The New Challenge

Following my cashout, I'm left with exactly $300 in my Pokerstars account. I thought about carrying on in the $2.50 180s or going back to STTs for a while, but in the end I've decided to give cash games another go, mainly because I want to be brave enough to play in one next time I go to Dusk Till Dawn. Having looked through all the different types of cash game on Pokerstars, I found myself totally confused with what type to play (I'm sure there weren't this many options when I was short stacking on Everest last summer). In the end, I've settled for NL10 6-max no ante, mainly because I've just finished reading Kill Everyone and the last chapter of that is about online 6-max games, so I'm hoping that'll give my learning a little headstart.

I've had a little play around at it this evening, just 4-tabling for now while I work out what I'm doing. It wasn't a complete disaster for a first attempt:

I know I'm playing nothing close to an optimal strategy, mainly because I don't know what one is. I've just downloaded The Poker Blueprint so I'm going to have a read of that, and the 6-max chapter in Kill Everyone, and hopefully formulate a plan for world domination from there.

I know 1000 hands is no kind of sample size, but if any of you kind people who know what they're doing could translate this for me, that'd be grand:

I never had to worry about my own stats in MTTs, it was just push/fold most of the time. Looking at that, I guess I'm playing too many hands, but other than that I don't really know what I'm looking for, so I'd welcome any tips!

_Anonymous_ Topic starter

15.07.2011, 15:09 0

I've now played my first 3000 hands of 6-max NL10. It's been a steep learning curve coming from the 180s, but I'm really enjoying it. I don't miss the push/fold game at all, and I feel like I'm actually playing poker now.

As far as results go, I'm just about breaking even, but as long as I don't go bust I'm not overly worried about the money at the moment, I'm just trying to improve my game, I've still got a lot to learn!

It took me the first half of that graph to realise that I was playing far too many hands, 3betting too much, and not folding enough when I was beat.

The stats below show that my first goal of reducing the number of hands I play seems to have worked. I've not deliberately been playing more aggressively post flop, but it looks like the aggression has really stepped up in my last 2 sessions, probably just as a result of better pre-flop hand selection meaning I'm more likely to have a hand worth betting post-flop.

I'm going to look through HEM later and try and find a hand or two to post, as there's definately been quite a few spots where I've not been sure what to do. All in all, I'm really happy with my decision to switch to 6-max, and hopefully I can continue making progress.

jbpatzer

Joined: 23.11.2009

Posts: 6,972

27.08.2011, 18:57 0

update?

My Blog: Midlife crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

[Closed] How far will $50 get me?