Snakes will smoke

I'll probably hit the tables soon, so I might as well publish those graphs before they get outdated.

First off, we have the graph for my ridiculously small sample of 45-manners:

Seems like I'm starting out on an upswing.
So far, every session has had exactly one final table finish, and there have been three 1st place finishes in total.

Those are side games, but I plan to continue with them, since they're quite fun and they're going well right now. My Pokerstars bankroll is at $318, so I might take a shot at the $3.50 tourneys if I reach $350 anytime soon.

And while we're on the subject of meaningless graphs, let's take a look at the updated April graph for NL5:

Where is this going? No one can tell...

Hey Harrier88,

I'm definitely tagging you before I play any more 45 manners

Keep Crushing

Laz

What the heck is going on in my NL5 games?

Take a look at the graph of today's session, see if you can make sense of it:

Once again, my mind seemed to be somewhere else, but I didn't even know where...
Oddly, I didn't even care about the results this time. Losing 3-4 buy-ins in the first few hands normally would have been a huge deal to me, and I wouldn't have been thrilled about the end results either. This time, though, I have been completely indifferent to that, and I'm still not sure whether this is a good thing or not.

I'm also not sure if it really makes sense to mix my games up the way I'm currently doing it. In my first few 45-man sessions, I remember trying to reload my stack when I noticed that I had less than the starting amount of chips. And today, I think I made a few all-in calls that could have made sense in a SNG, but not so much in a cash game.

Maybe I should concentrate a little more on one single format in the future. Pokerstars is currently offering this "Golden SNGs" promotion, so maybe I'll focus a little more on SNGs for a while. I might even get out my second monitor and start to play sets of eight tournaments again...

No spamming on my blog, please. ♠_cool:

Thank you.

Originally posted by jurijurijuri

This is a scam by the way, you will never get paid by referring people.

Originally posted by toxicchili
This is a scam by the way, you will never get paid by referring people.

Obviously.
But even legit offers have no place over here.

I have my virus scanner running now, just in case.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Obviously.
But even legit offers have no place over here.

I have my virus scanner running now, just in case.

Agreed, I have seen these guys release loads of different sites basically offering the same thing. They make money by people filling in surveys or offers to get their earnings, which they will never get. I think the risk of a trojan or virus is relatively low, the cost mainly comes from wasting time and posting reputation damging links.

Anyway, I should probably get back on topic :-)

Thanks guys for reporting it.

Kind regards,
Fran

Thanks for the clean up, Frankie!

Just finished my first 8-tabling session of 45-manners. This time, I managed to do four ITM finishes, with one 3rd place, one 5th place, and two 6th places. I also remember one close finish around 11th place or so.
Certainly a satisfactory result, but it is a little disappointing to come that far on four tables and then finish on relatively low ranks, without being able to ship a tourney. Especially considering that I entered the final table of one of the 6th place tournaments as the big chip leader. Then again, I got to the final table of the 3rd place game as a super short stack who was about to catch a hot streak...

This whole thing also made me remember how exhausting 8-tabling can be. Maybe I'll play again some time tonight, but I need a little break now.

To be honest, I've already toyed with the idea to make these tournaments my new main game, but I'm obviously blinded by recent results in both formats. It'll be quite a while until I can make a reasonable decision on this. Right now, I suspect that I'll be back at the cash game tables more sooner than later. But let's see what lies ahead.

Nice work Harrier,

Seems that we are getting one more turbo MTT maniac

Keep up the good work and crush crush crush ♦

glgl,
Fran

Originally posted by Harrier88
Thanks for the clean up, Frankie!

Just finished my first 8-tabling session of 45-manners. This time, I managed to do four ITM finishes, with one 3rd place, one 5th place, and two 6th places. I also remember one close finish around 11th place or so.
Certainly a satisfactory result, but it is a little disappointing to come that far on four tables and then finish on relatively low ranks, without being able to ship a tourney. Especially considering that I entered the final table of one of the 6th place tournaments as the big chip leader. Then again, I got to the final table of the 3rd place game as a super short stack who was about to catch a hot streak...

This whole thing also made me remember how exhausting 8-tabling can be. Maybe I'll play again some time tonight, but I need a little break now.

To be honest, I've already toyed with the idea to make these tournaments my new main game, but I'm obviously blinded by recent results in both formats. It'll be quite a while until I can make a reasonable decision on this. Right now, I suspect that I'll be back at the cash game tables more sooner than later. But let's see what lies ahead.

Hey Harrier88,

When you get to the final table of a 45 manner, you will need a solid understanding of Nash push/fold ranges.

If you are interested, the 45 man skype study group I joined discusses Nash ranges relentlessly. We sweat each other through join.me and discuss hands in real time.

They're also really nice guys.

So if you're interested, contact me by PM.

Cheers

Laz

Hey guys,

I didn't play much in the last few days, but the one NL5 session I did yesterday went reasonably well, bringing my Ladbrokes bankroll back up to $216. Not quite enough to break out of the graph I posted recently, but it's a start.

I think one problem in my recent games was that I treated my sessions like some annoying nine-to-five job. I'd just show up, put in my hours, and leave, only caring about getting the work done, rather than the actual quality of my work.
Instead, I should treat my sessions like some sporting event, where I'd mentally prepare myself before the game, warm up (okay, that's not necessary), and then play hard until the final whistle goes, refusing to let my everyday worries disturb my concentration. I tried to pay attention to that in my last session, and it showed.

One advantage poker games have over sporting events is that they're not scheduled, so you can take as long as you need to get in the right mindset, and have the option to avoid playing at all if you feel like you're not ready. I'll need to keep that in mind in the future.

There will be no poker tomorrow, though, since it's Good Friday. Let's show some respect.

And thanks for the offer, Lazza! I received your PM, and you can expect to hear from me soon.

Oh, I know what are you talking about, I was in one period like that myself, when I started playing every day at 8 or 9 AM and played till 5-6-7-8 PM, with some short breaks ofc., but it felt so much like office hours and I lost passion about the game very soon, just wanted to be done with the 'job'. So true.. I think there should be some middle; like being scheduled nicely but still feel free like poker player should feel at last

glgl,
Fran

Hey mate it's been a while now hope you are doing okay
Have you considered dividing the time? I don't know if it'd work for you, but I played 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon and 2 hours before going to bed and the sessions were like you said sporting events. It certainly fitted my schedule I don't know what you think about it; maybe for a change.

Also I'd like to know your opinion about playing different games (zoom, 180s), since I've been reading in many places that this slows your improvement, as you aren't focusing in one type. I know we are all different so I'd like to know what you think about it and if it's working well for you.

Good luck mate, take care.

Nice to hear from you again, mate! Yeah, I'm doing good right now.

I'm actually playing a pretty low volume recently, possibly even lower than last month. This will most likely not improve this weekend either, since I have my brother over, so we'll probably spend some hours playing x-box or tossing some baseballs around in the backyard.
My schedule is extremely loose, or even non-existent. I basically play whenever I feel like it, which typically includes at least one afternoon and one late night session, but they rarely last two hours. Playing in the morning is out of the question for me, because my sleeping schedule is completely screwed up and I don't wake up until noon.

Playing different formats can be tough if you're looking to steadily improve in both. Even most professional players specialize in either tournaments or cash games, and are often only decent in the other one. It can also lead to some bad habits if you're not fully concentrated, since some moves that are profitable in one format can be disastrous in another one. As I said in a previous post:

Originally posted by Harrier88
I'm also not sure if it really makes sense to mix my games up the way I'm currently doing it. In my first few 45-man sessions, I remember trying to reload my stack when I noticed that I had less than the starting amount of chips. And today, I think I made a few all-in calls that could have made sense in a SNG, but not so much in a cash game.

I chose to do it anyway, because I wasn't really looking to improve in single table SNGs right now, and instead tried to use my knowledge from about a year ago when I was grinding these games. Now that I switched to 45-manners, I haven't really done any studying on that topic either, but that might change if I decide to keep grinding them.

I guess it's okay to try out new formats for a change of pace and to widen your horizon, but you should still choose to specialize in one area and use the other one more as a side project.

So are you planning on picking fast fold games or SnGs to especialize? Or are you going to keep playing both games after your brother's visit?

I'm the type of person that needs to wake up everyday at the same hour and eat at the same hour. Otherwise I have troubles sleeping and eating, I'm like a little baby
That's the reason why I had a schedule even tho I didn't "need" it, waking up at 9 and going to bed at midnight. Of course this makes it a routine which is pretty much like the 9-5 job kind of thing that you were trying to avoid in the first place. Nevertheless I did it for about a month and it didn't feel so monotonous.

We are also all different and different things work for us. So I'll be checking to see how you do

Have a nice time with your brother

Shorthanded fast fold cash games are still my main game. But I'm still considering whether I might change that and focus a little more on 45-manners, because I was enjoying my recent sessions and have also been quite successful, even though this is most likely due to a hot streak. You need a pretty big sample size to reach any valid conclusions in high variance games like this, and I have only played a few tournaments yet.

In my opinion, having a daily schedule like you do is actually quite enviable. There have been days where I felt like I just woke up when the sun was almost about to set, and I think it has really hurt my productivity in both poker and real life.
I tried developing a better sleeping schedule a few times in the past, but always failed so far. I guess I just need my few hours past midnight when I surf the internet, watch youtube videos and drink booze in order to unwind. Obviously, I can't do that before I play poker.
As much as I remember hating to wake up in the morning, I kinda miss my university days when I had an at least somewhat organized schedule.

Btw, that 9-5 job analogy was not referring to any kind of schedule, it was referring to my attitude towards the game. The thing I wanted to avoid was that I just hit the tables, play for a while, and leave, only caring to put in some volume because I felt like that's what I'm supposed to do. Instead, I wanted to play for the sake of playing, and try to do my best rather than just "getting the work done", just like I would do if I was playing a competitive sport.
If you can pull that off while still managing to keep a solid schedule, then that's even better.

Happy Easter, everyone!

I played another NL5 session last night, finishing with a small profit of a little under a buy-in, nothing really worth writing about.
When I ended the session and was casually looking for new posts in the forum, however, I did find a thread bearing unexpected news that will force me to reconsider my long-term strategy.

As it turns out, there is hardly any traffic on iPoker's NL10 Fast Fold cash games. Right now, in the afternoon of a holiday, there are only around 20 players at the tables, and when I was checking last night, not a single person was playing.
I'm just as puzzled as the next guy, since NL10 is usually one of the busiest micro stakes limits.

My plan was to grind my bankroll up to $300 and then take shots at NL10. Long-term followers might remember my struggles with this limit on Pokerstars a few months ago; I was actually quite interested to see how these games are at iPoker. I can forget about that now.

So what are my other options?

Of course, I could always just play regular NL10 games, but I don't know... for some reason I don't like these games. Maybe it's the slow speed, maybe it's the hassle of table selection... I can't even put my finger on it.
Theoretically, I could try to grind my bankroll up to the point where I can play NL20, but that's a little too much for me. Besides, the traffic at NL20 games isn't that great either, about 100 people playing right now. Even the traffic at my current NL5 games is just good enough to be acceptable.

I could just cash out and play at Pokerstars again, but then I would be back to my untracked account. The reason I have been playing Speed Poker at Ladbrokes and tournaments at Pokerstars was that Speed Poker is better for generating rake, so I used my tracked account for this, while the traffic at Stars is just much higher, so it's easier to grind SNGs over there (trying to grind MTSNGs at a network with low traffic is an exercise in futility).

Maybe this situation gives me another reason to consider switching to 45-manners as my new main game...

If I keep my Ladbrokes account, I could just choose to keep enough money in it (around $200) to keep grinding NL5 to maintain gold status. Of course, that would put me in danger of this "playing for the sake of putting in volume" syndrome I was alluding to in previous posts.
Another option would be to do enough studying in the next month when my gold status should still be active to do well enough with an untracked account. For some reason, I don't really see that happening, though...
And if I cash out at Ladbrokes, what will I do with the $18 in my sports betting bankroll?

I'm interested to hear any suggestions you guys may have for me. And if you happen to know any other partner room that offers Speed Poker with decent traffic, don't hesitate to tell me.

Enjoy the rest of the Easter holidays, and take care!

Can you play 45-manners at ladbrokes?

If you can't the only thing you can do is move to pokerstars mate. I doubt there are any other poker rooms with higher traffic than iPoker besides pokerstars. It's a shame your account is not tracked, but unless you want to play NL5 for a long time you'll have to move.

I find it so weird no one is playing at NL10, it's like the most popular stake.

How much time do you think it would take you to get 7 SP in a day? That'd be all you need to keep gold status with the +10 SP bonus (assuming you play every single day).

So looks like your 2 options are:
1. Play the minimun at ladbrokes to keep gold status and the rest playing on pokerstars.
2. Move to pokerstars entirely and lose your gold status.

Hey Harrier88,

Sign up for a MicroGaming room. Their fast fold poker (Blaze) starts at NL10 and the traffic is comparable to NL5 at iPoker (maybe a little less).

Regards

Laz