Operation: Pay My Rent

[ledfut]

So as you can see by my join date, I'm not exactly a newcomer to internet poker. However the kid is pretty much dead (probably a good thing). My life went pretty much like my poker “career” did, start off strong and go down in a flame of glory (I'm talking like blowing a $500 bankroll in 45 minutes). I would say that I lost about $1200 + bonuses on the internet and $600 one summer when I was homeless (hey at least I didn't spend it on booze and get arrested).


This year I finally had enough of New Jersey kicking me repeatedly in the balls and moved down to Miami, FL. One of my new friends here brought up poker and it got me thinking about the game again, and I decided that I would play freerolls only and try to work my way up from there. I did this for about 3 days and decided to check out FTR and see if anyone else was trying to pull off what I was. Fortunately for me somebody on the first page of this sub-forum was doing exactly what I was. Another poster said something that piqued my interest. After a little poking around on Google, I was able to apply for $50 in free money. While waiting for my br to magically appear, I played freerolls for 2 more days (best finish was 71st out of 5431, 18 got paid). My money was in my account when I got home from work.


I decided to start this blog so I can try to prevent that which has plagued me both in poker and real life, which is start off strong and maintain for a bit then lose everything epically. To guide myself I have set up some guidelines.

1. I must only play at the stakes I am rolled for. (minimum 25 buy-ins)
2. Full Ring cash games only.
3. I may only move up if I have 50 buy-ins and 10k hands at current level.
4. I must keep daily records of number of hands played and wins/losses.
5. A session must be stopped immediately if I have lost 2 buy-ins.
6. I will not put any of my own money into this venture.

These will be changed as my bankroll and game change.


I am going to treat this like a part time job, so I am going to play a minimum of 1k hands per week. I am also going to do monthly reviews and possibly some other things depending on where my mind takes me.


tl;dr
60 dollar starting br (somehow got another $10)
Going to practice conservative br management
Must follow certain guidelines

[!Luck]

Good luck!

[Keith]

good luck.

First piece of advice - get the two month free poker tracker 3 trial and then follow that up with the 2 week holdem manager trial. Hopefully the you will have enough to purchase or look at their get it free options.

[ledfut]

I installed poker tracker 3 last night and realized that I didn't have hand histories saved.

Thursday: 250 hands 36ptbb/100
Friday: 142 hands 69ptbb/100
Saturday: 353 hands -30ptbb/100
Sunday: 75 17ptbb/100
Total: 852 11ptbb/100

Despite Saturday's spew I am up almost 2BI which is an encouraging start. I need to pay closer attention and pick my spots. My main problem was being too aggressive and in the wrong spots.

With poker tracker now handling the "heavy" work, I will probably post stats on Sunday night. I may do some updates during the week depending on how I feel after work.

[BankItDrew]

Gogogogogogogogogogogogo!

[ledfut]

I was recently talking to my girlfriend about my best friend and the rift that came between us over the month he stayed with us when we moved to Miami. The realization I came to was that I am a math oriented person while he is a language oriented person and this causes us to come to very different conclusions on the same situation.


With this realization in mind, I have decided that if I am going to get good at NLHE and accomplish my goal of eventually being able to pay my rent through poker it's going to be because of my understanding of the numbers. How I am going to go about this is still undecided, but at least I have a direction now.


This week has been up and down both at the table and away from it. On Monday my boss told me that the owner wants me to start being able to run the register (not just take money and give change) and eventually become some sort of supervisor. While the raise would be nice it sort of put me on rl tilt because it's more responsibility than I want at the moment. However, I need the money and job security is priority number 1 at the moment, so I am going to do it.


At the tables, I started off down a buy in, won it back, and lost 2 this morning. I have 2 days off coming up at the end of the week so I should be able to put some good focused volume in.


More to come later.

[scfc_andy15]

congrats at job and keep up the grinding

[Penneywize]

Best of luck bud. This is the type of OP that starts out with the dude freerolling and ends up like BankItDrew, ballin with a sick life. GG

also, FML

[ledfut]

I am drunk while typing this so it may come off a bit more aggressive than is intended




I sort of forgot about this blog because I have been busy not only at the poker table but away from it as well I will start off with a graph It runs from 3/11-3/23.




This doesn't include the prison rape I put on a table for 174 hands for $5.37 (77 ptBB/100) or the $6.50 I lost while tilting 2 weeks ago playing MTTs. Overall I would say it's been going pretty well, I'm remembering and relearning aspects of the game everyday.


On the RL side of things I am at odds. They say that poker will be there after you take care of your personal problems, but I feel that real life will be there when I get done with poker I don't feel comfortable in Miami and my goal is to build up an online br to take as much money from the people that frequent the local card rooms. Seriously, fuck this city My goal is to work my ass off to get the hell out of here.


I don't really want to talk up my game (lest I jinx myself), but I am feeling really comfortable at $2nl at this point and I can start to see what it will take to make a living doing this.


Final note: My birthday is coming up on Wed? (the 31st) I may be able to extort a present out of the in-laws when I go back to Jersey in the middle of April. I have 2 options when asking for a present


Get my poker tracker registered

or
Get a book


How does the community at large feel? I love books and feel it will help me out in the long run. However, I don't know which book to get.

Edit: I told you I was drunk...

I was looking at pokertalberatings.com and here is the grading they have for me

PF tightness: D- 48% looser than optimal
PF aggression: F 164% more aggressive than optimal
Flop aggression: F 77% more aggressive than optimal
Turn aggression: F 89% more aggressive than optimal
River aggression: F 127% more aggressive than optimal
Showdown freq: C 28% less frequent than optimal

Overall: F

Fuck these assholes.

[Penneywize]

Edit: I told you I was drunk...

I was looking at pokertalberatings.com and here is the grading they have for me

PF tightness: D- 48% looser than optimal
PF aggression: F 164% more aggressive than optimal
Flop aggression: F 77% more aggressive than optimal
Turn aggression: F 89% more aggressive than optimal
River aggression: F 127% more aggressive than optimal
Showdown freq: C 28% less frequent than optimal

Overall: F

Fuck these assholes.

2k hands is a tiny sample size, don't worry about it. They probably don't even have you tracked for the full 2k.

From what I've seen from others, it takes about 10-30k hands to graduate to 5NL. Be patient. To make any money out of poker you'll need to be playing what, 50 NL as a minimum? So that is some time away. One step at a time.

On that note, I must say that your ambitions are quite high for someone playing micros and not beating them well. Don't take this the wrong way obv - you'll continue to improve if you put in the effort and keep your head on straight.

I'm rooting for ya. I have some suggestions if you want to hear them, but being that I also play low stakes I don't want to be a presumptuous dick and talk as if I'd been there, done that. Let me know.

[Keith]

post your positional stats , but at a guess I'm guessing that you are raising arginal hands and keep betting them too far and bluffing way too much.

[LuckySlevin]

50kminimum for pos stat sample imo! grinding the penny's is so hard to maintain focus, you're doing a good job of just playing regardless of your results- 1.2k hands onwards in above graph you're hard works been paid off long may it continue!

[rpm]

i would get pokertracker man. in my opinion, there is nothing in any poker book i've read (a few) that you can't learn from studying free forums on the net (plus you can't ask books questions and hope for an answer). plus the more you'll use PT the more you'll understand all the stats and their acronyms and what they mean when people speak of them. good luck.

[ledfut]

Thanks for the responses.

I am not going to post any of my PT stats until at least 10k hands. I know that 2.2k (now 2.5k) hands is a very small sample and really wouldn't be worth posting. I will say that during the downswing I was way too aggressive and not getting away from hands as quickly as I should.

I think what really kicked my ass into gear was getting my hand histories for the 4 days prior to turning hand histories on. I was able to see that I really wasn't doing as bad as it looked (852 hands is a lot when your sample is only 2k).

I know I may have high aspirations in this operation, but I am under no delusions. I know it's going to take a VERY long time to achieve this. I figure it will take at minimum 1 year before I am playing for stakes high enough to be able to pay my rent ($50-100nl), and it may even be longer than that. I am setting a lofty, but achievable goal to keep myself motivated through the monotony.

[Keith]

reason i said post pos stats is that with those PTR ratings you must be doing something seriously wrong preflop . i was a 10n 6 max player hit a downswing + busy work schedule last summer and ended up taking up FTP's take 2 promo last september with my freeroll winning on full tilt.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ml#post1870271

I was essentially playing my 10NL 6 max game there and tightening up a bit and it crushed it. If you are playing the wrong hands from the wrong position you could end up getting into a habit which is hard to break.if you are running 35/30 over those 2k hands you really need to address it now not in 8k hands time.

edit found my stats
Ok so the 2nl FR op on FT is officially over . 1505 hands +$27.33 in 5 days for 90.88 bb/100 playing 23.8/14/2.57 AF 2.4% 3bet .6% 4bet ,24.7 WTSD% and 54.1 W$SD%

Also cleared the first 5$ bonus but get that at the end of the promotion, leaving 109.59 (+5$) in the bankroll.

[Keith]

oh .....and give HEM a try before you commit to buying PT3 even if its a delayed present

[ledfut]

I am running 21/11 over 2.5k hands. I may post pos stats later as I am too lazy to sign up for imageshack right now.

I have a take 2 promotion coming up the first week of April. I feel it's a +EV way for me to get into the habit of multi-tabling.

[ledfut]

So there is some good news and bad news. I'll start with the bad news first since it leads into the good.

Bad news: I fucked my back up really bad at work and I am bed ridden (I cannot stand on my feet).

Good news: I get to play a lot of poker during the downtime.

I have been considering going to dealer school because I'm sick of working my ass off at shitty jobs with shitty pay and no appreciation for the work that I do. The only thing that has made me hesitant is that I would have to borrow the money ($1200) off of my dad and the economy is shit so it may be tough finding a job in the industry. Now that I hurt myself working for an unappreciative asshole (he got pissed that he had to do actual work after I got hurt last night) I have decided that I am going to give it a go.

Poker has been slow over the last few days due to work and social obligations. Dropped a BI to a fish this afternoon when he called my push on the turn with a flush draw (I had top 2) and I left the table immediately before I tilted my small profit away.

[ledfut]

5k hands update:

Things have been going well at the poker table. I am now playing 2 tables trying to clear a take 2 bonus ($25 total if I clear all 9 days).

A few things I want to keep in check over the next 5k
-Tighter pre-flop
-More aggressive pre-flop
-Fold when I'm beat

I decided to post my ev graph because my blue line is below my green line and since I don't know how to read this graph I don't know what it means. All I know is it seems like everyone else is the other way. Maybe one of you can explain it to me.

Will update again after my take 2 bonus with results.

[ledfut]

So I finished take 2 last night and cleared the $25 bonus. It didn't go as horribly as I thought. Going into it I figured if I lost less than $25 over the 9 days I would come out ahead. I did better than that and won $5.93 during the promotion (this includes the Friday before where I started multi-talbing).

Take 2 graph:



I'm glad it's over, I didn't get a lot of studying in during the 9 days and I think the graph shows it. I have also identified some leaks in my game and I am going to look into them deeper when I go back to Jersey later this week.

Here is how I sit after 1 month:
Starting BR: $60
Ring Games: $10.14
Tournaments: -$7.45
Bonus: $25
Total: $87.58

I think I am going to stick to playing 2 tables because I didn't see a significant drop in play (even though I'm still only at 7k hands) and I feel like I focus more.

[Kijjo]

Your allin graph shows the luck factor or variance of your allin situations. For example, if you shove and get called at any point in the hand and at that point you are a 80% favorite to win the pot and let's say the pot is $10 (just to make it ez), then what this graph does is chart what your expected value would be, versus the actual results. So the expected value line would give you $8 in the above scenario no matter what happened - because if you did this over and over and over, you would expect on average to win 80% of the pot which would be $8. Then if you won the pot, the other line would chart your $10 pot (if you took a bad beat, it would chart you losing it).
So basically you can look at this graph and see if you're making good decisions in allin situations or just getting lucky.
NOTE - this is only for allin situations.
Many people don't realize how you can misinterpret this graph. For example, you have AA, you raise, get a caller. Flop comes a bunch of rags. You bet, dude shoves, you call, he flips over a set. Did you get unlucky? Well yes. Will it show on this graph? No, because at the point that you went allin you were already screwed. Preflop your expected value was great, but your expected value from this pot when you called the shove was tiny. Now if you happen to suckout, sure, then you'll notice a blip on this graph because you actually beat the odds.
Make sense?

[ledfut]

It makes sense, thank you.

I sorta figured it out when i pushed 99 against AA and hit a 9 to win and my all-in ev showed a sharp downturn but my green line went up.

[Kijjo]

Heh, I wouldn't fool with pokertableratings much, seems like a crock to me. I'm mainly a SNG player, so only had a few hands of 2NL that they tracked. Check this out:
Hands 368
Net profit $5
34.78 BB/100
Overall D-
It tells me in each category that I'm too aggressive, then it tells me that I need to showdown about 15% more of the time. It's like they haven't realized that you should make people pay to get to the showdown when you have them beat???

[Keith]

Heh, I wouldn't fool with pokertableratings much, seems like a crock to me. I'm mainly a SNG player, so only had a few hands of 2NL that they tracked. Check this out:
Hands 368
Net profit $5
34.78 BB/100
Overall D-
It tells me in each category that I'm too aggressive, then it tells me that I need to showdown about 15% more of the time. It's like they haven't realized that you should make people pay to get to the showdown when you have them beat???

You could have had AA got it al in preflop against KK QQ AK and won 8$ and for the other 297 hands lost $3. They're comparing your play with that of winning players. This sample size is way to small for you to say the grading is a crock, but is on its way to giving you some feedback where you could improve your game. I.e if you have 368 hands on a guy at 10nl you'll think that the stats will be somewhere near, but actual win rate could be way off.

[ledfut]

^^ exactly. PTR bases their grades off of the top 10% of players at the stake you are playing, and on Full Tilt the micro regs tend to be nitty. That's why I was a bit offended (read: drunk) when I saw them talking about how loose (21/11 then 18/12 now) I was and how I was too aggressive. Once I read how they calculate it though, it makes sense.

[Kijjo]

So you'd say it makes sense to tell me to be a better player at this level I need to be less aggressive, but go to showdowns more? Sure there are situations where that is a good play, but in general, I disagree whatever the stakes. They're saying I'm too aggressive on every street, but I should showdown more often.
Maybe this is why I suck at cash games, 'cause to me that sounds ridiculous.

[Keith]

you'll hit the flop 1/3 of the time, good villains will know this . If you are betting 3 streets all of the time good villains will work out that you are bluffing a lot, checking the turn when you have a good hand and villain has nothing but is aggressive can induce him to bluff the river so that you can gain value from hands that he would otherwise be check folding.Also against maniacs check calling just lets them bluff all of there money in when a bet or raise from you will get them to fold. If you are likely best , why let them fold after one street, letthem bet 2 or 3 streets and then get all the money in .

[Kijjo]

Bet Flop % - 21, Raise % - 4.6
Turn - 25, 3.1
River - 29, 3.5

Total Aggression factor - 2.61

I went to showdown 26% of the time and it's telling me I'm about 15% short of optimal, so I should be showing down around 41% while being more passive.

PS - I really don't care, I just think it sounds wrong. Doesn't really matter to me.