[Closed] Where the heck went my $50?? Progress/regress blog.

okay one thing I forgot to say before being rushed away from PC.

There is one thing I think I could do in order to improve the shape of the bankroll curve. It wont really help to win more, but it should help to lose less!

Take a look at my graph - there are quite noticeable swings which are going nowhere but down. Let me introduce you to them - my day-time playing is sayng "hello" to you "hi"

I seem to play bad and lose nearly all games at day time, and I recover what I lost when I sit down to play at night.

One thing that might have something to do with this is that during day-time (my timezone is currently at GMT+2), many of the players playing at cake-poker are russian. I am a bit confused about the fact that I can hardly find a way to out-play them because of their nationality.. I mean I played a lot of live games at dormitory with russian-speaking guys and they nearly always were amongts the first ones to get busted! So maybe this is only in my head. why I am losing my day-time games. But the fact is taht I am playing a lot better at evening, when international players come around. But that's not necessarily the cause.

Other, and more likely, cause is that I can't put my focus together at day-time. It also comes back to my university years. What concerns preparation for lectures and writing papers, I ccould never do anything productive at day-time. No matter how hard I tryed! The only thing that kind of helped a bit is putting on headphones and cranking the volume up. Other than that - I always postponed all the duties till at least 10PM, and kept doing what I need till 04AM or so. Focusing at night wasn't a problem and the work was just flying!

Now, looking back to the graph, all the upswings there happened when I played rather at evening, or after midnight. My plan is to keep doing exactly that - keep my night games profitable, and keep away from playing poker at day-time at all. Will see how it goes! If that wont work, will sit down and try to identify something else, what makes me lose games during day..

See you later!

hey nice to see another person who's playing my limits. (your actualy playing higher lol).$5 in 50 games isn't much imo. But as long as your breaking even or better and learning from it then it's all good.

I'm currently playing $0,25 45player sng at pokerstars and went from $10,85 to $17 today. i also got a blog and i managed to go from $0 to $50 in 10 days and then losing it all till $7,50 again in about 1,5 months.

and at my limits i know what you mean by donkey play. (although i've never seen 3 donkey's at $1 ST sng that went all in first hand with such hands at poker stars)

Best thing to do is play tight. Most of the players im against are donkey's and some maniacs who will just call bets with a high card or a gutshot straight draw. so it's hard to read opponent.

bluffing/semi-bluffing at the start of the S&G/MTT usualy turns out ugly since they simply can't fold their middle pair with 3 kicker. So what i do is i play tight, i play very few hand. when Antes come i start getting aggressive, I'm REALLY aggressive actualy. It's alot of fun to blind steal 5 times in a row and actualy getting away with it. I blind steal and bluff in the right spots at the final table (usualy antes come right before it). and i finish in the top 3 more then 50% of the time.

(learning how to blind steal and how to use your position will improve your play alot in MTT, probably less in STT but its still important. It's only worth blind stealing when the blinds actualy make a difference, which is when the antes come in the tournament im playing atm)

o.O Hope that helped. just dont try to actualy figure out donkey's, their play simply doesn't make sense. i had a donkey calling my bet on the flop with 77 and turn with all overcards on them so he would only win if i was bluffing. i had top pair (Q's) with A kicker on the turn .a 7 of hearts comes on the river and im all in. Thinking i had him beat to see he made a full house with the 10-10 on the flop and his three 7's.

Hello. You should really play more if you want to get a good representation of your ROI.

And bad beats will happen, and you won't see a shortage of them. My biggest ever is: set over set over set over nut flush draw. I had the middle set.

Anyway, stick to the very basics and you'll crush the game. I am currently playing 5$ SNG's and i have to say i rarely seriously consider folding top pair good kicker even if my opponent goes crazy. They are baaaad...

Play what you believe it's the best representation of ABC poker ♦

Hahaownedlolz:

thanks for advices However I am not new to poker and have been playing for quite a while. I deposited $50 three times already. 2 times at PokerStars and once at Carbon Poker. All three times went to around ~$120 by playing $5 sng's and then started thinking too good about myself. All three times.... Which translates into playing games for $20 and $30. Also $10 of course but $10 wasn't that bad atually.

That's the reason I am here and that's the reason why I chose Cake Poker - limits are ENFORCED till yo ureach $300.. so

andreibalint:

yes I definitely need to play more. 50 games tells nothing.. and YES - bad beats and suckouts are inevitable at lowest stakes.. just a part of the game I wish it'd be at least a bit smaller bit, though..

now my update.

Played for couple of evenings since my introductionary update and kind of got to a point where I asked myself whether the way I play can really be profitable at $1 games. I kept getting sucked out. I thought maybe the first 50 games were kind of unlucky or something but poker gods kept rewarding players making really bad calls. Trying to pull up fancy moves against donks rarely worked out because they simply do not see any difference in the size of the bet.. I sat back and thought a bit. Read few articles here at pokerstrategy and made myself to admit few things.
1) played a bit too many hands preflop. Not WAY too many, but I realised that I lost many pots due to inability to lay down a seemingly good hand after the flop.
2) so it comes out that my post-flop play sucked. Or was constantly being sucked-out.. one or another, I needed to make conslusion and take action!

what I decided is to open a blank page. To start learning from the beginning and work my way up bit by bit. First, to be strickt about choosing my cards pre-flop. And I mean REAL strickt. The advice I found somewhere was to "enter the pot when your hand will most often be the best after the flop" and it stick to my head. Now each time when I find struggling whether to fold or not, I remember that phrase and it kind of helps me to decide.

My post-flop play follows. I decided to cut chasing draws DRASTICALLY. Strickt pot odds. Also cut down in bluffs and anything else even a bit more fancy just went out-the-window, unless I have a read on my opponent OR he is smart enough to hit the FOLD button when he simply has to.

Did it help? Early do do any conlcusions, but it MUST be helping. Now I feel a lot more relaxed during the play. I might even be a bit too passive at times, but I think it is not particularly a bad thing at Cake Poker $1 games..

Reason? take a look at those two!
first:

as you see, three palyers are all in. And no it's not in the beginning of the tournament or anything. It's THE BUBBLE. 4 players left and somehow three of them went all in.. and what's fascinating is the sequence. 88 guy raised, then 79s thought it might be a good idea to go all in, KQs went along and 88 did not have enough brain to let his cards go.

Second!
http://cakepoker.com/en/HandHistory/Default.aspx?Hand=xsTAwsLDzM22wsTExMTAxYjFwMDCx8PE
I am holding KJ, have the chipstack DOUBLE the size of other three players summed up, so KJ is a must-raise from the button. The small blind RE-raises with pocket 10ns, and the 58s guy somehow ends up making a RAISE as well! Okay, I think it's a no-brainer for a fold but since it's only 700 for me to call, I am getting amazing odds and I can afford it, afterall. I call and the 1010 guy joins with his remaining 210chips.
The flop? I get two pair. The 58s guy showes, I call and get the expression on my face which MUST have been pretty undesribeable, I believe. ♠_o:♠_o:♠_o:

How in the world is it possible to reason with players like that?? I thought players at PkerStars $1sng's where bad and extraordinary loose, but THIS... Yes I can use hands like that explaining why I can not get a good hold of those $1 games, but it does not help me to beat players who are relying on their luck to play poker. So once again, since players are playing as crazy as that, I am forced to be extra-picky about what kind of cards I should enter the pot, and in what circumstances..

Anyways. Even with relatively big swings, I am slowwwwwly slowly moving up the ladder. It blows my mind, however, that for $1 - 10man sng's the rake is $0.20. It means I must have an edge of 20% just to keep myself alive..! so maybe I should not complain that my step up to $2 buy-in is progressing much slower than I thought it will..

SUMMARY

games played: 95
GRAND TOTAL: $58.83
Total rake: $13.10
Total rakeback: $4.33

good news, however, are that now I will be able to buy in for $1.15 + $0.10 10 player sngs. They are turbos, but they have 4 places paid out of 3. Not that I burst at 4th place real often.. in fact, only few times it happened, but I am eager to try those small turbos and just see how they go. Since I am not aspending reall ya lot time in playing, hopefully those turbos will help me tp crank up the volume of games played a bit, if they will be successful for me.. I am quite excited for this, however. It was a small mileston for me to reach, and I finally managed to do it.

I guess that's all for this time. Will be back here in a while with another fresh update!

Till then, and may the flop be with you!

Good