happy!

I know i know - i'm not going to get complacent, but...

I've just had 3 profitable days in a row playing single and multi table's.

Start of day 1, £30 bankroll.
End of day 1, £38
End of day 2, £44
End of today, £56

I came 7th (£10 win) in an MTT today, my first money position. Special £0.67 entry too so £9.23 profit. Also played three £3.60 single table (usually stick to £1.20), came 4th, 3rd (money) and 3rd (money).

Lot's of things are "clicking", I'm feeling very disciplined, laugh at bad beats, and several times today folded good hands and announced to my wife who plays with me (poker...) that "he has K9 for two pairs and has my AA beat" only for him to continue betting against another player, win, show cards, and show K9. It's one of those days where you almost feel like all of your opponents cards are being played face up!

Anyway, my first upswing, I will make the most of it, and will be back here to share my first downswing in the very near future I am sure.

Congratulations

Nice going Satan. You're right, you need to make sure you don't get complacent, just as, when the downswing comes (and it will), you have to not get negative or, worse, convinced that things are "not fair" in some way.

Your progress at £3 + £60 is particularly encouraging - since you know you can do well at these (though possibly your end game needs work?) you can justifiably hang around and learn how to play slightly stronger opponents than at the lowest levels.

You need to be aware that at some point things will stop "clicking" - you'll make a mistake that you immediately spot, but it's too late; or you'll play tired, or annoyed, or you'll make a hopelessly wrong read. All this means is that you got a hand wrong - if you can, have a look at the hand history and if there's a clear mistake on your part, you can immediately learn from it. It may even be the case that if you looked at some of your winning hands in the cold light of day, you can spot holes or lucky breaks there too - you can't analyse too much.

Anyway, excellent stuff - I hope it keeps improving for you. I see you play in £ - which site? I am a regular at William Hill (£0.15/£0.25NL tables and £5.50 and £11 STTs) and it sounds like I'll be seeing you around in the near future if you play there too.

Thanks for the comments bion. I play Littlewoods Poker but I think that's a william hill skin and shares the users? Today I played four £1.00+£.20 single tables. I finished 3rd, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, netting a fairly healthy (% wise) profit today. £4.80 staked for £12.00 return.

You are right, it's my end game that needs most work - I don't have any problem hitting the top 4 pretty much every time now (infact I don't think I've placed lower than 4th for quite a while). So this in mind, after I have finished re-reading Harrington again, I will be ordering the 2nd Volume, handily titled "end game".

I've not yet invested in Poker Tracker, and don't go back and analyse my hands - I feel that is my next step. Once I am happy with my game (I feel i'm just reaching that point) I will start tracking from then - no point tainting stats until I'm ready to start recording them.

What's your username on Willam Hill? Mine is the same as my username here.

I'm Markelby on Will Hill - almost always to be found on the £0.15/£0.25 tables (both full ring and their new 6max ones). If Littlewoods is a cryptologic skin like Hills then I'm ssure I'll see you at some point!

I would advise getting Poker Tracker - it's very useful both for checking out your own stats and your opponents' stats (although you need several thousand hands before you can come to solid conclusions about your own game, you only need a few dozen of someone else's to know a key stat - VP$IP, or "voluntarily put money into pot". This'll indicate how loose the oppo is - while a very low figure might just demonstrate a bad run of cards, a very high figure (+50%) means that they're super loose and either an over-aggressive maniac or a loosey loosey calling station fish of the highest order.

But as well as that, Poker Tracker gives me DISCIPLINE. It puts my stats out there, in black and white, and every time I look at it I wince at bad hands, feel pleased about good hands, and think how I can improve my results.

Don't forget that most sites offer hand histories on the fly - certainly Hills does so I guess Littlewoods does too. So you can take an immediate look at a problem hand - if you don't want to deal with it there and then, just cut and paste the text into a text doc and come back to it later.

Also, when I started playing STTs I was at Pokerroom on their $5 + $0.50 tables, and it took about twenty goes before I was consistently making a positive return. I would imagine that as soon as your BR is healthy enough (you already have, what 11 or so buyins for the next level), you could step up to the £5.50 STTs without much difficulty.

Thanks I'l keep off the £5.50 for now, but am going to play two £3.30's in a row and see how I do. If I don't hit the money or 4th out of the two games, I'll stay on £1.20 for a while. I shall update everyone later!

Hail satan!!

-'rilla

Usually doesn't Satan hail 'rilla?

Argh change of plan... did a £3.60, came 7th, didn't bet heavily enough on the flop (stupid slow play attempt with AA) and got rivered. Lesson - better to take a small pot NOW than lose a bit pot later. A lesson I knew, and knew my error as soon as I called the all-in on the river (they hit 10 10 on the turn and river to match their pocket 10 against my single A which I matched on the flop).

Oh well, back to £1.00 for now, I'm not as disciplined as I thought, a little more work needed

I'm still doing ok. I did the odd £3.60 tournament and didn't place in the money - I knew I wasn't playing properly, got to get through the mental barrier and forget it's costing more to enter and just concentrate on playing good poker.

Still, even with losing quite a few £3.60 stakes and sticking to the £1.20 tables, my bankroll is currently at £73.50 so I'm still growing it. I've definitely broken through the break even barrier and feel very happy.

My goal is to get up to £100 at which point I will switch to, and stick with, £3.60 tables. The problem at the moment is that I play one £3.60 game, lose, and then have to play three times as many £1.20 games just to get my entry fee back. If I lose some and win some at £3.60 I'm confident I'd make a profit, but doing the odd one here and there is just hurting my bankroll.

Any advice - is sticking at £1.20 until I get to £100 bankroll a sound strategy, or should I just jump in now and stick with £3.60 tournaments (I have bankroll to pay for 20 of them).

If your not all that confident then wait till you get to £100, this should give you a buffer to play off while you get used to the higher stakes. Keep telling yourself that the players aren't going to be much better at the £3.60.

Its not them being better that im worried about... its me being worse £100 mission is underway!

I'm sure you're ready for the $3.60s, but Irisheyes is right, if it's a confidence thing then you may as well stay at a level you feel confident. Having said that, you could have a bad run at the lower stakes and that'll hurt you too. My guess is your ROI will be almost as good for $3.60 as it is for $1.20, so you'll be making three times the profit. but only you really know whether you're ready.

Satan, if you have AIM, add me as a buddy - I'm markelby. We can talk poker and maybe play a tourney together sometime. My advice is of limited value, but I was where you are now 6 months ago and now I comfortably pwn £5.50 SNGs, so you never know.

Cheers bio I'm going to stick at this until I get to £100 just to give my confidence a boost and show that I can do it long term. I don't have AIM, been meaning to install it, I'll try and get round to it... but playing against you, hmmm not sure about that

If you don't mind me asking, how many £5.50's per week do you play and what's your average profit? Just wondering what I can aspire to!

Hi Satan,

I just saw your new thread and am pleased you tried the $3 SNGs and delighted that you're winning at them!

I can't really talk about my weekly SNGs right now as I have returned to mostly playing ring (I have just had my best week ever - £275 profit since last Thursday at £25NL tables), with the occasional SNG and MTT thrown in.

But when I was at your stage, I was playing maybe 15 Pokerroom $5.50 SNGs a week (averaging maybe only about 90 minutes a night) and making a net $1.50-$2 per tourney, winning about 1/5 of them (I discovered that I was actually better heads up than against 2 other players - god knows why but I had as many 1sts as 2nds and 3rds combined).

Did you get AIM installed, by the way?

Thanks bio I'm tempted to start playing ring games as it does seem to be where the money is. I might learn limit rather than nolimit though, because I'm a bit scared about the variance on NL and know that a couple of bad mistakes could wipe out days/weeks of profit in one bet.

I just got round to installing AIM... my username is "xSatan1974x" (note the x's at the beginning and end, somebody had already pinched Satan1974!).

Speak to you soon!
Russ.

I started playing ring after having done about 70 $5.50 SNGs and being consistently up, and I fancied a different sort of challenge where I could earn more than $2 an hour on average

Of course, the first couple of goes I had at it were hugely (as it seemed at the time) profitable - in 20 minutes I'd won $30. Of course this made me think I could pwn $25NL. Of course, I rapidly realised I couldn't, and ended up losing half my painstakingly built up SNG stack.

Then, a mate recommended I try William Hill as it was "full of fish" (it is, to an extent, but it's also a bit harder than the US-centric sites I've played at - and of course, £25NL is 1.8 times more expensive/profitable than $25NL). I got myself in order, did a LOT of reading up, and have been playing there now for 4 months, the last two of which have been fantastic* and have earned me well over £700. And that wouldn't have happened playing SNGs

I've added you to my AIM list - I'm markelby. Speak to you soon!


*though for an idea of what happened round about month two, read the "Newbie Circle of Death" sticky...

Originally Posted by satan1974

If you don't mind me asking, how many £5.50's per week do you play and what's your average profit? Just wondering what I can aspire to!

You can aspire to anything you can imagine. Seriously, don't restrict yourself in your poker (or any other) dreams. Check out the stickies on this site, especially some of the stuff by Aokrongly, he has great advice on how not to let you hold yourself back. you can easily go from making $10 a month to $100 a month to $1000 a month to ..... All it takes is patience, discipline and hanging around this site