First weekend of online real money play went well

[ddubois]

I made $50 playing .50/1 in roughly 10 hours/250 hands my first weekend - plus $40 for the sign-up bonus. I'm pretty happy about that! Although I'm pretty sure I got more than my share of luck towards the end - I had a KK turn into a set on the turn and a house on the river, and an AA turn into a set on the flop, and both hands got alot of action.

I identified one flaw in my game I want to comment on, and see if other people went thru a phase like this: I seem to be paranoid. I know from what I've read here and in books that I need to be aggressive to win, and I think I have been doing just that, things like betting straight-flush draws on the flop, maintaining aggression when my overcards don't hit (sometimes scaring people off the pot, sometimes catching my K on the turn, etc). But I've noticed I tend to chicken out as the rounds go on, and usually by the river I am making a "crying call" with, for instance, TP high kicker against a 3-suited board, only to discover I have the best hand. It happened so many times this weekend, I'm embarrassed for myself. (Of course, the next time I told myself, "I'm going to bet this river, damnit!" the board paired and someone made a sit out of it, and my top pair died, heh.) Is there any advice that would be good for me other than: "Don't be a wuss."?

One more thing, I was trying to do Caro's first mission during my Friday session, and I'm embarrased to say, but I couldn't keep up. Even when I turned off the TV, and tried to focus completely on the game, there was hand after hand where I found myself asking myself: "Crap, what did that guy showdown with", because my mind was wandering to a prior hand, zoned-out staring at the board looking for straights, thinking about what I mucked, answering my wife, trying to figure out where MP starts when one seat is empty and one player is Out, checking website hands played towards my bonus, whatever. I would like to think that Caro's missions were made with the pace of real-life poker in mind, that the hands-per-hour of online poker are what is making this task difficult to keep up with, and that I'm not strictly inept, but that seems like wishful thinking. It sure would help if Party Poker output shown-down cards in the chat window, because the cards are only up for like 3-4 seconds, but they don't. Anyone else experience this phenomina? I will try to re-do Mission One over on my next session.

[ike]

First of all, welcome to the board and congratulations on a successful session. I have a few questions and suggestions. Only 250 hands in 10 hours? This can't be right, you'd get more than 400 in even playing live. As for your big win, great job and enjoy it but I have to tell you this is gonna be a rare event. I don't necessarilly doubt that you can consistently beat this game, but no one can consistently beat a game for 5 BB/hour and especially not for 1/5 BB/hand depending on which of your numbers is right. As for paranoia, try thinking not about what your opponents COULD have but what they actually do have. This will take some practice but as your hand reading gets better you will see monsters under the bed much less and be able to make more profitable value bets, and value bets are where you make your money in low limit holdem.

[ddubois]

I apologize for giving fuzzy data. It was ten hours of play. I guess I stopped looking at my hand count after I acquired my bonus (200 hands), and just guessed around 250. Based on when Party Poker says I hit my bonus (around hour 6), it was probably closer to 350 hands.

It's hard for me to put people on hands in .50/1 since a not-small number of people will call with random stuff like J6, or raise with any Ace.

[siccjay]

[ QUOTE ]
but no one can consistently beat a game for 5 BB/hour and especially not for 1/5 BB/hand depending on which of your numbers is right.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you are saying that 50 bucks in 10 hours at .50/1.00 is not realistic? Aren't there people that play some lower limits and make good money? 5.00 an hour isn't very much.

[Trix]

I think a good player can make 7+/hour playing one .5/1 table, wouldn´t be any point in it though.

[harboral]

Congratulations on your first win - good job. The .50/$1 games on Party go about 70 hands per hour. For my play at these limits I make about 4BB/hour - and for anybody that says "you could make 7BB/hour, but why bother", well I play 3 tables at a time and for $7 per table I don't think $21 per hour is something I wouldn't bother to do. I don't know anybody that made that amount for a large sample size (25K hands or more) but I suppose it could be done by a few very good players. As you said about "putting people on hands", I usually bet or raise with what I believe is the best hand until they try and convince me otherwise with a reraise or check-raise, and I'll still call them down in many cases if my hand is strong. AL

[fluff]

No, 5BB/hr on one table is not realistic in the long run. Even at Microlimit. Some people might claim they earn that much, and no doubt they do in the short run, but most of them are unaware of just how long a "short run" is. Incidentally, you also usually don't hear back from these guys once they hit a month long down swing. There are several posts discussing this here and you can probably search for those with terms such as "win rate" "BB/hour" and so forth.

Now this is for one table only. Of course, if you're a proficient player you can play more tables. Say your win-rate is a more realistic, but still optimistic, 2BB/hr. If you can sustain that over 3 tables simultaneously, then you have a win rate of 6BB/hr. Now if you do this at a 2/4 table that is $24/hr, which is a very respectable rate.

[fluff]

Here is an old thread from the probability forum discussing win-rate confidence over time. Of special interest should be the first 3 posts.

Link here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=probability&Number=455275& Forum=All_Forums&Words=1%20million%20hours&Match=E ntire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=6months&M ain=453740&Search=true#Post455275)

[ddubois]

With all due respect, there's not a chance in heck that I did anywhere near 700 hands. I double checked the Account View Activity page before my second post, and like I said, I hit 200 hands at the end of hour 6, and only played 4 more hours. Maybe I was slowing everyone down; I don't know.

Now the Account View Activity page shows nothing because I logged in yesterday and didn't play, which kind of sucks. I would like to see the activity log go back farther.

On a similar vein: I downloaded pokertracker. How do I get my hand histories from party in as much of an automated fashion as possible? I saw there is a menu option to send myself the last 1-100 hands, but I played way more than 100 hands. Also, it makes no sense for me to have to manually pull the last 100 hands, because how am I going to know when I've hit my 100th? I did request last 100 hands via email anyway of course, but I never got the email! Lastly, I was poking around Program Files/PartyPoker, and there were a bunch of .HHF files that looked like hand histories, so I thought I scored, but now all those files are gone! Does PartyPoker delete those .HHF files everytime I shut the app down or something insane like that? Altogether, this has been rather upsetting; I had just assumed acquiring hand histories after the fact would be trivial, if not automatically logged to my machine. I'm worried I've lost valuable pokertracker data irrecoverably.

[harboral]

Sorry - I didn't realize you knew so much about hands per hour...............You are claiming only 33 per hour on Party for your first 6 hours; where I have logged 70,000 hands.............. and average 70/hour per table. But hey, you are new and are probably right. BTW, figure out Poker tracker yourself.

[moondogg]

Don't try to count to 100, you'll miss some hands. Pull your hand history regularly (PokerTracker will skip specific hands that it has already imported). PokerTracker has a Auto-Request Hand Histories feature (the hand icon on the toolbar). If you leave it running in the background pulling 100 hands every 45 minutes, you should be fine.
Occasionally requesting hand histories through Party doesn't work. They say that you should receive the email shortly, and it never shows. I haven't had this problem in a few months, but if I don't get the email within a few minutes, I re-request it.
After 100 hands, if you haven't gotten them from Party, you'll never see them again. They will only provide you with you last 100, even if you ask them nicely in e-person. I'm pretty sure that they don't store histories locally (at least for any extended period of time). The just added the session history feature which you can access from the table, which may have been what those HHF files were, but they probably get deleted when you leave the table, log off, log on, or something like that.

[deacsoft]

Congrats on a good first weekend and welcome to the fish pond that is PartyPoker.com. I just have a couple of tips that may help you get started in a winning way. First, being aggressive is a winning way of playing poker, but you still need to pick your spots. There are so many poor players on party that being aggressive more than not is still going to keep players in the pot. Be selective preflop and use your position. Plan on having to showdown every hand your in. Especially in .50/1.00.

Also, to help remember what other palyers are doing left click on the players name and use the 'player notes' option. The information will stay on whatever computer you're using. That information can be accessed everytime you encounter the same player. Hope this helps. Good luck.

[ddubois]

I am merely stating what I saw in PP's stats page. If you have such a problem with respectful dissention that you need to get sarcastic, then I will not miss your replies to my posts.

Edit: That said, I suppose it is conceivable that there was a delay between the time I earned the 200 hand bonus, and the time party awarded the bonus. Grats, you win, hope your ego feels better.

[Illininate]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess I stopped looking at my hand count after I acquired my bonus (200 hands), and just guessed around 250.


[/ QUOTE ]

Here's the reason for the discrepancy: that's 200 raked hands you played, as that's what Party Poker keeps track of for bonuses. Since the pot needs to reach $5 for them to rake it, and at .5/1 it only gets to $5 about 60% of the time, that 200 raked hands is probably more like 300-350 actual hands played.

-Nate

[ddubois]

Aha! Thank you for clearing that up Nate.

PS: I am UIUC alumni, now living in Hawaii. How's the weather in Champaign? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Illininate]

Hah! Saying you're in Hawaii and asking about the weather in Champaign in February is crueler then cruel. I think it got up to 18 degrees today. Hurrah.

Although, I guess the cold is sort of a motivator to do well in class - so one day I can be rich and afford to move somewhere warm! /images/graemlins/cool.gif