ggbman
07-31-2005, 03:30 PM
July has been one of the best months of my life, poker has been phenomenal, and I have generally been having a great time. As I mentioned in a post earlier this month, I decided to move up to the 10-20 6 max a little earlier than planned because things were going so well at 5-10. I had over a 1000BB bankroll when I made the move, and I wanted to get a head start on 10-20. I have logged about 23,000 hands at 10-20 with a pretty marginal 1.17 BB/100 win rate so far this month. Since I 4 table it, this still translates into a reasonable hourly rate, and I am not too bothered because I haven’t really had a good run of cards in my time there. I was about break even over my first 14K hands, and have been running at 2.6BB/100 over my last 9000 hands.
It’s obviously difficult to speculate what I think my “true” win rate is at 10-20 since I will need a bigger sample size to determine anything, but I feel from observing the level of competition there, that I can definitely beat the game from 1.75-2.25 BB/100 with my current skill level. As I begin to make natural adjustments to the game, hopefully an even higher rate could be possible. Again, there isn’t anything too scientific about this conjecture, it’s based pretty much on my observations of people’s play and how I feel run of cards has been relative to what I would deem a normal run.
One thing that has crept back into my consciousness is playing more than 4 tables. I used to 8 table the 15-30 game, and for a little while a 6 tabled the 10-20. I tried 6 tabling for the first time the other night and found it quite manageable, so I will probably be doing a bit more of that in the future. I’m sure my EV drops a bit, but I think this is easily compensated for by the fact that I get in more hands and receive more rakeback.
One thing that is kind of interesting this month is that I have started to take an interest in MTT’s. I really do detest the variance, but the rush of making it deep in a tourney is amazing. I’ve always felt that I was pretty decent at MTT’s, and that I was due for a big score. Well, I made it this month. Obviously this is dependant on your standards, but I made a $4,000 cash in the starts $10+1 rebuy. I also made a few other decent finishes, I got 13th and 35th in two other stars rebuy tournies, and all told I made about $4800 in cashes this month. I played two Party Poker Supers with no interesting results, took a few bad beats in one, and got all with the nut straight against the nut straight with the flush free roll and lost. I think I need to stop playing these, the buy-ins are higher than I feel I am comfortable with the amount of variance in MTT’s. I also managed to satellite into the Party Poker Million the other night, but I didn’t get great cards, and I was knocked out in 600th place or something like that when my nut flush draw didn’t get there. All told, tournaments are definitely +EV for me, but I am giving up a lot of equity by not playing cash games.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving up a little EV to take a break from cash games and play other kinds of poker, but I think maybe I should venture back into SNG’s instead of MTT’s. I probably mentioned this before, but I initially began building my bankroll by grinding out the $10 and $20 SNG’s. In the last couple of months, I have played some 109’s, and I have found them to be amazingly soft. I don’t know what people playing those are making, but I suspect the good players are really cleaning up. This could provide a nice break from the limit grind every now and then, and I can probably make a similar hourly rate to my current earn if I 6-8 table them.
I have logged in about 37,000 hands this month, which is good considering I taken a few days off. I told myself that if I made $15,000 for the month including rakeback, I would take the rest of the month off to celebrate. I have reached that goal, and i did take a few days off, but ultimatley i couldnt bring myself to take 5 straight days off, as i've never taken off more then 3. In fact, in the last year I have probably taken around 20 days off in total. Since Michelle came back from Texas, I have been spending a lot of time with her, so really I’ll just get around to playing more when I can, fun should my first priority at this point.
This month has been great for my long term confidence, and I realize how feasible it is for me to make 100K a year while I’m a full time college student. When you take into account that I will effectively have over 5 months of the year where I have no school and can play full time in the matter that I have now, it seems even more possible. One thing I like to think about is how much my game has progressed in the last year. If I can continue to learn at any comparable pace over the next few years, who knows what is possible.
On a side note, my apprentice Mike has had a very impressive first month after setting up his poker account. He’s up almost 800BB at 2-4 with a current win rate of 4.56 BB/100. Obviously he’s a little luckbox, but he appears to becoming a decent player anyway. /images/graemlins/smile.gif
I finally set up an affiliate account and Mike is my only sign up, it will probably be this way for a while because I don’t get enough to compete with many of the other affiliates. If someone wouldn’t mind PM’ing to let me know how to \become a Eurobet affiliate without setting up a website, and how some people get enough rakeback to GIVE OUT 30% to their sign ups, I would appreciate it.
Thanks for all the support, good luck to everyone, and I will see you at the tables!
Gabe
It’s obviously difficult to speculate what I think my “true” win rate is at 10-20 since I will need a bigger sample size to determine anything, but I feel from observing the level of competition there, that I can definitely beat the game from 1.75-2.25 BB/100 with my current skill level. As I begin to make natural adjustments to the game, hopefully an even higher rate could be possible. Again, there isn’t anything too scientific about this conjecture, it’s based pretty much on my observations of people’s play and how I feel run of cards has been relative to what I would deem a normal run.
One thing that has crept back into my consciousness is playing more than 4 tables. I used to 8 table the 15-30 game, and for a little while a 6 tabled the 10-20. I tried 6 tabling for the first time the other night and found it quite manageable, so I will probably be doing a bit more of that in the future. I’m sure my EV drops a bit, but I think this is easily compensated for by the fact that I get in more hands and receive more rakeback.
One thing that is kind of interesting this month is that I have started to take an interest in MTT’s. I really do detest the variance, but the rush of making it deep in a tourney is amazing. I’ve always felt that I was pretty decent at MTT’s, and that I was due for a big score. Well, I made it this month. Obviously this is dependant on your standards, but I made a $4,000 cash in the starts $10+1 rebuy. I also made a few other decent finishes, I got 13th and 35th in two other stars rebuy tournies, and all told I made about $4800 in cashes this month. I played two Party Poker Supers with no interesting results, took a few bad beats in one, and got all with the nut straight against the nut straight with the flush free roll and lost. I think I need to stop playing these, the buy-ins are higher than I feel I am comfortable with the amount of variance in MTT’s. I also managed to satellite into the Party Poker Million the other night, but I didn’t get great cards, and I was knocked out in 600th place or something like that when my nut flush draw didn’t get there. All told, tournaments are definitely +EV for me, but I am giving up a lot of equity by not playing cash games.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving up a little EV to take a break from cash games and play other kinds of poker, but I think maybe I should venture back into SNG’s instead of MTT’s. I probably mentioned this before, but I initially began building my bankroll by grinding out the $10 and $20 SNG’s. In the last couple of months, I have played some 109’s, and I have found them to be amazingly soft. I don’t know what people playing those are making, but I suspect the good players are really cleaning up. This could provide a nice break from the limit grind every now and then, and I can probably make a similar hourly rate to my current earn if I 6-8 table them.
I have logged in about 37,000 hands this month, which is good considering I taken a few days off. I told myself that if I made $15,000 for the month including rakeback, I would take the rest of the month off to celebrate. I have reached that goal, and i did take a few days off, but ultimatley i couldnt bring myself to take 5 straight days off, as i've never taken off more then 3. In fact, in the last year I have probably taken around 20 days off in total. Since Michelle came back from Texas, I have been spending a lot of time with her, so really I’ll just get around to playing more when I can, fun should my first priority at this point.
This month has been great for my long term confidence, and I realize how feasible it is for me to make 100K a year while I’m a full time college student. When you take into account that I will effectively have over 5 months of the year where I have no school and can play full time in the matter that I have now, it seems even more possible. One thing I like to think about is how much my game has progressed in the last year. If I can continue to learn at any comparable pace over the next few years, who knows what is possible.
On a side note, my apprentice Mike has had a very impressive first month after setting up his poker account. He’s up almost 800BB at 2-4 with a current win rate of 4.56 BB/100. Obviously he’s a little luckbox, but he appears to becoming a decent player anyway. /images/graemlins/smile.gif
I finally set up an affiliate account and Mike is my only sign up, it will probably be this way for a while because I don’t get enough to compete with many of the other affiliates. If someone wouldn’t mind PM’ing to let me know how to \become a Eurobet affiliate without setting up a website, and how some people get enough rakeback to GIVE OUT 30% to their sign ups, I would appreciate it.
Thanks for all the support, good luck to everyone, and I will see you at the tables!
Gabe