[Closed] Nose to the Grindstone - Again

Hey Brad. Bugger about having to relocate to the West Island. Still, you can sort the ockers out while you're there and show them what's what.

GL with the grind! No doubt you know that BR goals are pretty much pipe dreams as variance has so much of an impact - especially in the short term. Still, it'd be epic to hit them I guess.

thanks waiboy, only got the name now i realise you're a fellow kiwi.

I guess roll hopes would be a more opprpriate name.

Soooooo. for an update as i started playing this a couple of days before starting the blog.

I started 3 days ago by swollowing my pride and playing the sattelites to the daily doller and WSOP main event qualifier .25+.05 and .30+.05 buy in respectively.

I remember grinding these for ages on my first attempt to build a roll about 18 months ago and finding it a painful battle.

this time I guess i'm better because its extremely easy.

The main lesson i have learned in those 18 months is that bankroll management is 100% important and the god of poker will punish you dearly with bad beat after bad beat for straying outside of good BRM.

my roll has over thrice the initial coin in it now at $18.30!!!!!

if i continue to treble my roll every 3 days this should be a breeze. plan to switch to $1 sng when my roll reaches $25

hi again

since my last update I haven't played much, only a few hours but have continued running quite well and my roll has reached a staggering $26

today I switched from playing cheap as sattelites to playing $1+10c HU sng

I went through a phase of playing soley HU for a few months a while back with reasonably good success. Today I played 5 and won 3. I find that, altough i can play FR all day, one session of HU pretty much has me spent so i'm gonna stick mostly to FR at the moment.

I've noticed there is no HU forum below gold on this site (which i reckon sux) so here is brads HU lesson #1: Valuebetting

Note: I know my line looks weak but this guy really polarised his checking range, checking very good and very bad hands and betting his mid strength hands.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $30(BB) Replayer
($1,000)
Hero ($2,000)

Dealt to Hero J♣ T♥

Hero raises to $75, raises to $175, Hero calls $100

FLOP ($350) 8♦ 3♦ 5♠

checks, Hero checks

TURN ($350) 8♦ 3♦ 5♠ A♣

checks, Hero checks

RIVER ($350) 8♦ 3♦ 5♠ A♣ Q♦

checks, Hero checks

Hero shows J♣ T♥
(Pre 47%, Flop 3.2%, Turn 0.0%)

shows 8♠ 8♥ (set of 8s)
(Pre 53%, Flop 96.8%, Turn 100.0%)

wins $350

villians mistake here was not betting any street.

Well its time for a new update.

I guess its been a bad start to the week.

Had the runniest nose in the business on monday and believe me the runny nose business has been thriving in NZ, despite the recession.

Went down to the local Dunedin Casino Last night to play the $30 Rebuy. (obv not part of the grind, just for fun) started with 19 players

Last time i went i felt as though the level of play was quite good but this time a couple of the good players were replaced with a couple of bad ones and this turned it into a pretty soft game.

I ran pretty well for the most of the rebuy period hitting a few sets, my Very few bluffs got folded and my good hands got called which is nice. Didn't have to rebuy and had just above average stack at the break so I added on.

the other table quickly lost a couple of people and in my opinion the best player at our table went over to theirs so that was good. I was the only one who regularly raised preflop and kept accumulating chips for about an hour. then I got it in with AK and lost most of my stack to KJ and a couple of hands later jammed about 6 blinds with A8s after a limper (who showed his mate for advice ♠_mad: but at least his mate didn't say anything) he then called with AK and held.

I reckon I played pretty well so thats the main thing.

As far as online is going my rolls back to $20 (it peaked at $33ish) after a bad run and admittidly some bad play on my behalf.

anyway i'll put that behind me and try to start dominating again. bye

I would like to congratulate you on starting a blog as I can now follow you progression as a micro tourney grinder and receive tips about value betting top set.

Your goals are outrageous. *Edit* They aren't out of the question after seeing your 45man super turbo results though

I'm still hovering around the 1.5k mark with my roll. Feel like I am getting much better though an I'm starting to be pretty comfortable at 50nl 6max with all the unrelenting 3 betting.

Have you had a go at the steps tourneys? They are very easy but you can't cash out until the $26 ticket stage I don't think which might not be the best for your bank roll management. The first step is a $1.10 99 man super turbo where top 30 pay. Its impossible to not make the money I think.

I quit my job as well. Unfortunately I have another one starting straight away so no poker pro for me.

are you serious about quitting your job?

are you going to work for conflict of interest guy who keeps on hounding you? i'm assuming this is sam?

sux how you dont have a tracked account

Yes - I am
Yes - He came back with an even better offer so I thought I better take it to keep up with you AUS dollar earners. Going to be an interesting job where I will probably have to actually do stuff
Yes - It is Sam
What - Is a tracked account?

its an account tracked through pokerstrategy. you get free videos and articles and stuff but i don't think there's a way to retrack accounts.

oh yeah and about the steps tourneys. gave them a go before i started the grinding. pretty fun and got a couple up to the $26 token but just kept playing steps with them and eventually busted. think overall probably made my initial buy in back on rakeback.

Ever go through a stage where you just play badly? Your brain says "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" as you click call?

Well I currently go through that stage. Its a strange tilt that doesn't so much come from bad beats and anger, but from somewhere deep inside me, my inner donk, climbing slowly out of the grave.

Maybe its the stress of the upcoming move across the ditch, maybe guilt from playing when I should be packing/getting things in order is surfacing and getting me out of tourneys so I can get on task.

Either way its led to some bad play and even straying out of good BRM, which I haven't done in ages, somehow my account is still at 20 bucks so thats something.

Shame shame shame on my name.

Anyway i've obviously fallen waaaaay short of my ridiculous "roll goals" so here's the new plan:

Goal 1: pack and put my businesses in order

Goal 2: only play if I have completely finished getting it together

Goal 3: Get to Aus, GO CRAZY for a week then start work, deposit $100-$150 after 1st pay and start playing $1 MTTs,

Goal 4: Destroy my inner donk and bury him, forever this time.

Oh yeah and i'll start as soon as I get out of this last tourney i'm in...

If he had a polorized range (which he probably didn't) y wouldnt you take a stab at any stage without showdown value. He was not gonna get value out of u by betting himself anyway. There's also something called the metagame nut triple check down. I won't go into detail about it, it's a relatively new advanced strategy. The villian was probably a pro.

Also your new goals are even less achievable than the 1st ones.
Plus hurry up I'm bored

I had showdown value vs the weak end of his range. have you gone to the cas yet?

is your phone working? and do you have my email address? i think so cos i emailed you that cv earlier. its just my full name as 1 word @hotmail.com

Been to cass every night. Only played poker 1st night though. Sat down with min buyin 100 left with 1000, no joke, just couldn't loose a hand, even made a 3bet double barrel with t3o.
Second night was ridiculously mag. Have no idea what I got up 2 but lost couple Hundy on roulette and bj. Last night went with steve broke about even at bj after bein 150 down.
Gona hit poker this arvo put in like 8 hours c if I can make any. $

sounds pretty mean as. i got a week before i start work but i get in late on sunday so i guess i'll catch you on monday. does you phone work? mine will

I got an oz number I put it on fb. Wat u doin Sunday night then? I get kiked out of here at 10 mon morn. Is it stil sweet if I crash with u? In the same bed
Sory 4 clogn up ur blog space

thats alright its a pretty bad blog anyway. yeah its all good to stay. its almost an hour out of town though i think. i'll catch up with the family and stuff on sunday night i guess. i'll text you sunday night

right time to try and get this blog back on track.

i'm in aus now, stating work tomorrow. turns out i'm living out in the middle of nowhere so couldn't go too crazy last week. guess i failed that goal.

Chucked $215 on william hill today. It looked OK but after taking $2 and some poor suckers soul at the HU cash tables they froze my account and are making me send in ID, credit card photo and bank statement. I wouldn't mind but now of course i'm in australia and don't have a bank statement.

Anyway got $200 on my FTP account too so started playing a bit of NL5 BSS this evening. As i've said i've always been bad at cash games so wanted to start with very comfortable BRM.

The session went well and Made a just over a BI in just under 1000 hands. Good to start on a winning note.

I still did some bad moves but i'll post some hands to find out just why they were bad. also going to post my stats for last 20k hands and see if any obvious trends emerge.

Time for an update:

So me new jobs going ok and stuff, deposited again on william hill, they refunded the 1st deposit.

Anyway i had the worst diarrhea on saturday night and didn't eat all sunday so I took monday off work. played poker for most of sunday and monday.

Am currently laughing at my attempt to grind cash tables, switched to the jackpot sitngos on WH. the play is significantly worse than full tilt. soooooooo donkish that the only option is to play super tight and wait til the push/fold phase. the blinds go from 50/100 to 100/200 to 200/400 and the other players take a while to adjust to me starting to push loose as a goose.

The rake is very steep for the jackpot sng but since i'm working off my first deposit bonus at around 50% RB i dont mind.

anyway i've made about 50 bucks after 70 games at around 3% ROI but including bonus probably more like 7%

went to the conrad treasury casino for the 1st time on friday night, couldn't have been in a better seat with 4 Loooooose as aggressives to my right and 4 nits to my left. unfortunately ran card dead for about 2 hours then left cos i was sleepy. will definitely go back though

this blog seems a bit pointless and i'm pretty sure only dave and sam read it. might start another one at some stage when i start doing something worthwhile poker wise. Until then, expect sporadic posts in this one.

Hi

I have started playing a bit more consistantly and am going to start posting hands again so i think i'll update the ol' blog too.

I've been playing sng on william hill and going pretty well over the last week or 2. I've moved up from playing mostly $5 with a few $10 to mostly $20 (6max) jackpot sitngo.

Would add an image of my graph but I cant with absolutely no effort so i'll say my results:

Tournaments played: 167
$ won: 130 + 120rakeback = $250
ROI = 7.3% (if you include rakeback its 13.4%)

so its going well so far over this small sample and according to HEM i'm about $90 below EV. (dunno if HEM tourney EV means anything though)

There's a weird payout structure for the 6max jackpot sng with 3rd getting back their BI, 2nd gets 1.5 BI and 1st gets 2.5BI (the rest is rake).
Anyway i've been getting ITM 57% but only 16.5% 1st, I think i need to work on getting to the money with a few more chips. running better while HU would be good too.

Well good luck and i'll go post some hands

The jackpots