Operation: Play MTTs

[Pascal]

Sup everyone.

I've been playing poker for about 3 years now, and taking MTTs 'seriously' for a year and a half.

I'm currently backed by an MTT player and play up to $33s on Stars and Party and up to €30s on Stars.fr and Winamax with an average buyin of ~$15

My main goal is to start playing more - I spent 10 months or so living in the Netherlands from last September (with my slowly dying laptop) and then a month in Serbia in summer so I've only played 4.6k games this year.

Now I'm going back to uni in the UK for the final year of my degree and I want to start playing at least 3 days a week, to put me on target for around 11-13k games a year. I also want to play some more live events; I've played 2 UKIPTs so far and it comes to my university city in November.

Will try and update fairly regularly!

[Penneywize]

glgl etc.

[kiwiMark]

Whereaboots in the Netherlands? I've been living in Rotterdam since October last year, gonna be there for another two months then head on to less green pastures.

[Pascal]

Cool, I was up in Groningen. Never went to Rotterdam, only Eindhoven and Amsterdam.

[Pascal]

Play a small session yesterday, went pretty badly. Kinda saved by 4th in the $27.50 360 cap for $500ish, but still ended up a few hundred down.

Might end up playing another session later tonight

[donkbee]

what hours do you usually play?

[donkbee]

i am bad at converting time zones, so maybe tell me according to MTTs :P so for example, you start with the big 22 or whatever

[Pascal]

normally start with the big $33 or an hour after and grind through with my last couple of tables normally finishing about the same time the big $27.50 starts, sometimes an hour earlier or later

[donkbee]

haha that didn't work either, i was like wtf when is the big 33? then i looked and saw it's at 3 am my time, so no wonder i didn't know it existed!

[Pascal]

So I play while you are asleep - specifically to avoid you? Mebbbbbe

Today's session was shorter, ended up down a few buyins but basically b/e. Won the €30 6max deepstack on .fr for €600 and cashed like 3 other tournaments, heh. MTTs are funny.

Been house sitting these last two weeks but going back home tomorrow. Get my PC back and going to try and put in a bit of a Sunday grind. Decided to drop some shitty stuff from Stars and Stars.fr that I play like $2 turbos and $5 f/os and replace them with €10 and €20s on Winamax, as well as a couple of early Party tournaments

[Pascal]

Played a decent session yesterday. Got 8th in the $11r 17.5k in a pretty standard 4bet spot against another reg with TT, annoying when the table had 3 big fish on it. Also got 9th in a Winamax 6max and 4th in a €30 KO on Stars.fr to finish up slightly for the day.

Got to sort stuff out round the house today and tomorrow but looking to play 3 more days this week. Backer also got a reload to me for Winamax so I'll be able to play more stuff there.

[dombo]

How 'soft' is Winamax?

[Pascal]

I'd say it's comparable with Party. I think plenty of regs are put off by the software which is understandable, and the structures are kinda funny (20k starting at 50/100 lots)

I'm a big Winamax fan boy and have been since I started playing there despite not actually winning any money on it (have only played a handful of tournaments). I think there can often by a psychological thing to choosing sites/tournaments to grind - some people "like" one site and don't like another and that's the way it is.

[dombo]

Is registration like Pokerstars. FR? Remember I had to do a lot of things there. Think they also had big starting stacks.
Btw see a nice upcoming series on the Winamax website.

Mostly what I am cared about is softness and if the site have sync breaks.
(Can't figure out why Ongame and Ipoker haven't solved this issue.)
Seating options and that HM works. And hopefully that my money is safe.

[Pascal]

Yeah, registration has a bunch of requirements under French law which are the same as .FR. The starting stacks of .FR are big but they max out at 10k which fairly normal blind levels, whereas Winamax has some very strange levels (like 600/1.2k with a 170 ante at a 6max table)...

There are sync breaks and the site is pretty soft which is why I like it. The software is pretty modern but the best way to describe it is like Apple designed it - it's really user friendly and very sleek (it's an Adobe AIR app basically) but at the same time it's not great for multitabling, although they have made it far better recently.

[dombo]

Ok, thanks for the information, think I will give it a try starting with that 10 Euro (re-entry) 2 day event.

[Pascal]

Played a bit more since last update but nothing to really write home about, few deep runs, 12th $11 40k in pretty brutal style which knocked me a bit and chopped .fr €25 1k for 375ish to b/e for another session.

Planning on playing Sunday and Monday, Winamax series starts Sunday which looks fun and only lasts for a week so gonna to try and get in good volume next week

[Pascal]

Yesterday was horrific, literally bricked everything. Today was mainly brutal too, including like 3 final 2 tables with 10k+ prize pools but managed to save yesterday and today with a 2nd in a Winamax €10 f/o for 1.7k. Will write something up properly tomorrow maybe, heh.

[Pascal]

Updateee.

I think the last couple of days really sum up what being an MTT player is like. I played a decent size session on Sunday, dropped a few tables compared to normal so I could focus 7-8pm on making sure the Pokerstars WCOOP tournament on here was all sorted. Didn't cash much, think I got final 2 tables in a $5q and 4th in a €20 Super KO (9+9+2) on .fr, and lost about $1k of $1.5k of buyins.

Monday started off much the same, and was looking fairly horrific until the end. I changed what I normally regged for and dropped some of my smaller buyin, big field tournaments like $4 turbos on .com to focus more which worked well I think. Needed to run a bit better deep, came 16th in $27 20k turbo KO, 11th in $11r 17.5k and 10th in Big €20 €10k gtd.

Last table of the day was "LE BOOSTER" on Winamax, ran like god. One of the biggest hands went as follows (Winamax hand histories suck and can't be converted so I converted it myself):

16 left:
Relevant stacks:
ahl - 4.5m
Me - 3m
alco - 2.1m
VR - 285k

blinds 40k/80k

ahl 160k utg
alc calls utg+1
fold
we call 160k w/ AQo
fold
VR shoves all in 285k
ahl calls
alc calls
we've got 125k to call into like 1m
call or shove?


Hope that's kinda readable, best I can do. Went into the final with a decent number of chips but lost a fair few pretty quickly with J7 < 88 on T74 (he limped off 5bb then shoved flop, sick pot odds) and then AQ < KK next hand for 10bb. Bust outs slowed down with 4 left and I withered away down to 5bb or so before doubling up AA v 86s, followed by two rapid busts leaving me HU. Doubled up to be close to him in chips but lost a lot with KK and the king high flush v rivered ace high flush (and top pair), then shoved 13bb from BTN with K8s into KQ. Nice run and always good to get a decent score, especially from such a massive field.

Taking today off then playing tomorrow.

[JohnBoyWWFC]

I think I would have to shove AQ. I feel like if UTG had AA/KK/AK/QQ/JJ he would be jamming pre or at least RR'ing because otherwise both you and UTG+1 have insane odds and he goes multiway OOP. I know flatting generally looks strong when he re-shoves but I don't think I would be flatting the top of my range there.

[dombo]

Are you in position? But I probably just would have made the call.

[Pascal]

Blahhhh. 9th in $11r 40k for $900 with over $8k for first. Short for all of final 2 tables and couldn't spin it up.

5am and I've got the flu and feel ill so hard to be anything other than meh about it. Ended up with a slightly profitable day, like +$500, but still waiting on that big score. Fuck $11rs, so soft but they hate me so much!

Duno if I'll tomorrow cos I've gotta be up in like 4 hours but Swansea Everton down the pub and hopefully we win

[dthorne04]

I cram AQ in that spot pascal

gl in your upcoming vamoaments pal

[Pascal]

Ty man! Talked to Jono etc all agreed cram. I did cram like a boss, utg folded and got soul owned by utg +1 who had AK. Hit on the flop tho npnp

[dthorne04]

Ty man! Talked to Jono etc all agreed cram. I did cram like a boss, utg folded and got soul owned by utg +1 who had AK. Hit on the flop tho npnp

[Pascal]

[Pascal]

I had a fun weekend, mate came to visit for new house and played a fair few games. Not a big fan of Sundays at the stakes I play but I made a day 2 on Winamax and had a Sunday Special ticket for .fr so played.

I played a small session Friday, won a small Winamax MTT for a few hundred yoyos and came 9th in the $11r 40k for $700ish after blinding down a lot in the final 2 tables and shoving 6 bigs UTG with A5s - big blind had A7s and a JJ7 flop wasn't a good sight. It asn't the funniest experience as I busted at like 6am after 1 tabling for 4 hours feeling ill but it still put me b/e for the day and I didn't feel tilted at all, maybe a little bit whiny, but my attitude towards beats over the last few months had got much worse and I'm really happy that I felt I dealt with it well by just moving on instantly.

I played another small session on Saturday and lost a bit, then a big session on Sunday which was saved by a 5th on Winamax for €1.1k. I was a bit unhappy to not do better with 4.5k for first and a traditionally soft as hell Winamax but got coolered really hard by the big stack and was happy to just stay at a big-ish final table for a while after continually finishing 9th-15th in all my other big deep runs the last couple of weeks. Winamax structures are also fairly crapshotty, average was 20bb and there were always a couple of shortstacks.

This week is going to be busy and there's going to be less time for poker, lots of life stuff to sort out! I'll see how it goes, might put in a session on Thursday or Friday then I'm going to the Pokerstars VIP party on Saturday (lol), mainly because I can get a lift and there's a free bar. Staying the night in London on Saturday night in a cheap hotel then back on Sunday to grind - going to be a big Sunday as I'm playing a $215 and a €100 so I'm pretty excited I did a 3 hour hand review with one of my horses today (I run a tiny stable for some micro horses to try and improve my coaching and help them improve faster) and it was good to have to think about hands. I'm not doing enough studying at the moment so I'll try to watch at least a couple of training videos this week.

I'm really happy to be back on my PC, I only had a shitty £400 laptop for about the last year which could just about do 3 sites without a HUD whereas my PC seems happy-ish with 4 sites and a HUD. I need a longer VGA cable to get my 2nd monitor going again, it's just an old 20" but frees up a lot of space. I'm planning on upgrading from 4GB to 8GB as HEM eats memory and I'd like an SSD at some point but I'll only buy them out of poker winnings so we'll see when that happens!

[Keith]

Corsair Performance 3 Series P3 128GB 2.5&#34; SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive - Refurb - Aria PC

any use?

[Pascal]

Blah, thanks - it's an awesome price but I just spent £90 on flights for my girlfriend to come and visit and last week was expensive because of moving into new flat etc. I'll probably wait a month or so and get these:

OCZ Agility 3 120GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive - Aria Technology
AKASA AK-HDA-03 SSD & HDD adapter - allows a 2.5" SSD HDD 3.5" PC drive bay - Aria Technology

Thought 8GB of DDR2 would be easy to find but seems impossible so guess I'm stuck with 4GB at least for a while which is a bit irritating.

[Pascal]

Realised I never posted my lifetime graph, here it is:

[dneureiter]

Nice graph. You ever play cash much?

Also I instantly went to see how much 8gb of ddr2 was on a site in the usa thinking it would be close to free. NOPE! 200$ or more. whaa?

[Pascal]

Cheers. I played cash for about a year when I was first starting out, moved up from 2NL to multitabling 25NL and then cashed out my roll for real life stuff. Recently played some 25NL on Stars and it seemed pretty soft, only a few thousand hands but no one seems to know how to play against light 3bets/5bets which was fun.

Newegg has it for like $80 a stick which is so sigh, I'd be better off buying a new motherboard with 4 DDR2 slots and just buying another 2x2GB cheap set. I'm going to keep an eye out for used stuff on PC forums though.

[Pascal]

No updates because I haven't really had much of a chance to play. I went to Stars VIP party last week - TR here http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...tr-191719.html

The Fox casino game was fun, kinda stupid structure - live players love deep to start and then ridic shallow at the final but punters will be punters - but it was good experience. In the TR I say "my hatred for live poker" but after getting some sleep and feeling better (I've been recovering from the flu for a few weeks now) looking back I definitely enjoyed it. Sent out the FTR newsletter today and been working on some new promotions (Ladbrokes/ACR threads are up, hopefully something else to come still!). First tutorial for uni is 2pm Tuesday so going to have to find some time to fit in some work for that.

This week has been really busy getting ready for uni, signed up for the law football team, sent off some emails and bought 2 textbooks (need another few still, sigh). Also signed up to the Hong Kong society for no real reason so I'm now part of HKSoc - yeahhhh!

Tomorrow I'm playing a local £150+15 2 day event. Should get £5k up top or so (I'm playing on stake but it would clear makeup and leave me with a fair bit) so pretty excited. iPhone will be charged and I'll take my headphones in case any live pros decide to open their mouths too often. More excitingly, one of my best mates and my "poker friend" (Inbetweeners rocks, your US version sucks ass) is visiting from tomorrow morning til Wednesday morning. We're playing the £150 because it's one of the few buyins in the casino above £30 so it'll be nice to go back having played a lot of the £20 and £30 competitions to play something big. And we get a buffet! Night out Monday I think with some old friends. He's the guy who got me interested in poker and we played a ton together as well as living in a student flat together in second year which just turned into a grind haus for us with our 3 flatmates hiding in their rooms (lol). We've travelled about a fair bit together and I haven't seen him in a few months, and I haven't seen him for at least a year when it's just been us two chilling not other friends and/or girlfriend(s) constantly around. As standard, meeting in the pub tomorrow at 11am Gonna wear my new bright yellow HKSoc tshirt all day!

[Pascal]

Also, here's a song from an album I found on my PC I used to listen to a ton. Fell in love with it again instantly:

Infected Mushroom - Becoming Insane (Album Version) - YouTube

[Pascal]

Wow, FTP is back. Brings back so many incred memories from when I first started playing poker at the beginning of last year.

MTT schedule atm is patchy but apparently they're going to slowly release more tournaments as they see what demand is like. 22k players on just an hour after launch is amazing and gives me hope that their MTTs will be able to compete with Stars and fill the gap in the market.

Starting off at Platinum with a $50 Mid Year Bonus to clear before my Deal Me In bonus, fired off a few tables of $3 SNGs and $10 KOs to get used to the software again and have some fun

EDIT: $24+2 KO deepstack $6k gtd has just gone up, starts in 40 minutes. Excited!

[Pascal]

Vamoooing off to play the £110 6max side at UKIPT, never played 6max live before so looking forward to it

[jaxpaboo]

How about a day at glance on how many MTTs you enter in a day. Do you start a bunch all at once or do you stagger your start times? What is max at one time that you are comfortable playing?

[Pascal]

Amount varies, probably somewhere between 60 and 100. I feel comfortable playing up to like 25 tables, I've played 35 before, but I'm trying to stay around 15 tables to think more about decisions etc.

I just open up the lobbies for the sites I play and register the tournaments I like haha. I late reg all the stuff running when I start that I want to play and then just register throughout the day. I've played the same schedule for about a year (although lack of volume means that isn't all that many times) and it gets really automatic about what you register/unregister, when the peak times are where you know you need to concentrate more, how deep you are in certain tournaments by looking at blind structure etc. It's gonna take a while to work out exactly which FTP tournaments to play and which tournaments on other sites to drop.

My favourite starting time is ~10.30-11am GMT but I normally start around 11.30am. There are less regs on and a few great $33s around that time as well as some soft Party tournaments.