Operation: Fish Fry

[lonnie]

Following in Mike's footsteps with this one. Haven't had a real goal since I've been playing poker and have been cashing out too much of my winnings.

Long term goal: 5/10 limit, full ring.
Deadline: When I'm ready

Milestone 1 Goals
Win 300 BB at .50/1.00 LHE
VP$IP <19%
PFR > 8%
Total Agg > 1.5 (PokerTracker)
BB/100 > 3.5


Will update this post with my progress as I go. Would like to make the first Milestone by Jan 1, 2005.

[mike4066]

I'll race ya

J/K man..

G'luck, look forward to seeing your progress.

Based on the changes I've seen in your play over the last few weeks I don't have any doubts you can make it.

[lonnie]

Based on the changes I've seen in your play over the last few weeks I don't have any doubts you can make it.

I finally quit being stubborn and started taking the advice offered in this forum. The thing that made it hard to change my style was that my loose/passive way of playing was winning money at low limits. My new style is much more fun and exciting. Plus, I don't have to wear my panties and skirt when I sit down for a session anymore. Although that wasn't all bad.

I'll race ya

Sounds good. Anything to keep me from paying so much attention to the money. The less attention I pay to the money the better I play it seems. This game is probably a breeze for millionaires.

[elipsesjeff]

Thats a good goal lhoney, there should almost be a FTR goal board or something to give people who play online hold em something to shoot for.

I may try to do something similar to you lhoney, but i'm not going to be too public about it, I might start at the 1/2 and try to double your BB. I dont want my goals to be obtainable too fast but I dont want them impossible.

So with a goal of 300 BB with 3.5 BB/100, you are looking to clear this in around 8500 hands? Also, if you dont get the 3.5 BB/100 are you going to continue playing until you do or will you move on? I ask this because 3.5 BB/100 I believe is too high to be sustainable over 8500 hands.

Good Luck.

[lonnie]

So with a goal of 300 BB with 3.5 BB/100, you are looking to clear this in around 8500 hands? Also, if you dont get the 3.5 BB/100 are you going to continue playing until you do or will you move on? I ask this because 3.5 BB/100 I believe is too high to be sustainable over 8500 hands.

Jeff, you may be right that 3.5 BB/100 is not sustainable. I am not sure what is a sustainable win rate for .50/1.00. This was a rough guess.

In my PokerTracker DB right now, I have 5,750 hands of .50/1.00. I have a win rate of 3.86 BB/100 for those hands. It is possible that I had some very good runs of cards in there that are skewing the numbers. I really don't know, because I have not been playing poker long enough to get a good handle on it.

I do plan on playing progressively better as I go, so I figured 3.5 too be a conservative number. I might be wrong.

More comparisons, but still not enough hands to get a solid number:
1/2 - 979 hands - 3.79 BB/100
.25/.50 - 3,052 hands - 8.09 BB/100

Maybe we can get some of the people that have 10K + hands at .50/1.00 in their PokerTracker DB to chime in on this one. Not sure there is anyone here with that many hands at this limit though.

[mike4066]

I have 9k hands of .5/1 and maintained 1.75BB/100, but if I take off the last 2k hands I would be about 2.75/100 I went through 3-4 days of tilt and not laying down hands that just killed me.

3bb/100 @ the low limits won't be a problem.

[lonnie]

Bracing myself for the bad run. I know it's going to come somewhere in this first milestone.

Nov. 1 - -3 BB
Nov. 2 +29 BB
Nov 3 +47 BB
Nov 4 + 15 BB so far

Seems like when cards are good, they are good everywhere. I was playing a .50/1.00 at Pacific while playing 1 table at Party. Two hour session so far - +15 at Party +40 at Pacific. Not counting Pacific's hands in this quest because of their lack of hand histories.

[lonnie]

Just had my biggest card rush ever!

Today's stats:
377 hands
19.63 VP$IP
10.34% PFR
41.94% WWSF
80% W@SD

+118 BB, 31.48 BB/100

Had fantastic cards and was playing against the perfect players.

2 AA + 20 BB
4 KK + 19 BB
6 AQo +18.5 BB
4 AKo +17.5 BB
4 KQo +15.0 BB
2 99 +12.0 BB
3 QQ +11.0 BB

The skillet is filling up at the fish fry.

The cold cards are coming, but this was a lot of fun.

[Ragingg]

Congrats... That's a really really nice card run.

I'm working on turning my 10 dollars at absolute poker into 100 :P . Doubt that will last 2 days... LoL worth a shot anyways.

[lonnie]

The run is officially over.

Nov. 1 - 268 hand, (-3.25BB), (-1.21)BB/100

Nov 2 - 558 hands, +29 BB, +5.2 BB/100

Nov 3 - 574 hands, +47 BB, +8.19 BB/100

Nov 4 - 569 hands, +118 BB, +20.9 BB/100

Nov 5 - 180 hands, +15 BB, +8.6 BB/100

Nov 6 - 185 hands, +15 BB, +8.38 BB/100

Nov 7 - 185 hands, (-15 BB), (-8.38 BB/100)

Nov 8 - 607 hands, +43 BB, + 7.23 BB/100

Nov 9 - 1,056 hands, +20 BB, + 1.88 BB/100


Today was extremely frustrating. I came within 15 BB of completing my goal 3 different times and dropped down to the 260-270 range again. Pre-flop aggression was down, total aggression was down. Flops weren't hitting and I was still betting. I got outplayed by my opps on multiple occasions.

This should indicate what a struggle today was - I won 20 BB, but paid 30 BB rake in the process. I think this is the first day I've ever had where my rake was more than my winnings. What a grind.

Insult to injury - Fnord shows up on the two tables I am playing at at 2:00 AM local and proceeds to school me.

The days when I was easily winning, I thought I was a poker genius. Today I am questioning all facets of my game. Struggling at poker has the added benefit of making you second guess your skill, even if the cards are not falling. I started trying to force things to happen by going for bad draws and calling down with second pair too often.

1,000 hands in one day is too many. I could feel myself losing my sharpness and attention to detail. I think I will try to cap my play at 500-600 hands in the future.

On the plus side, it WAS a winning day. I lost my patience several times and it cost me a lot of bets. I probably could have played better and finished this quest off.

I could tell from my play today that I am not ready for 1/2. The discipline is still not there. After "Fish Fry" is over I may need to do run off a few more K hands as Mike suggested. I'll dig up some bad hands from today and post them in Limit Holdem later.

[Fnord]

I could tell from my play today that I am not ready for 1/2.

You're almost ready for 2/4. Once you hit 300BB, consider cherry picking tables if you can afford to supliment your bankroll. Everytime I've moved up the opposition has been worse than I expected and it has been a rewarding experience beyond my expectations.

[mike4066]

Insult to injury - Fnord shows up on the two tables I am playing at at 2:00 AM local and proceeds to school me.

gotta love it.. but remember fnord isn't your typical party low limit player

I started trying to force things to happen by going for bad draws and calling down with second pair too often.

As long as you can see your mistakes your ahead of most of the people. You know what your doing wrong so you can fix it. They just keep thinking its bad luck.

I could tell from my play today that I am not ready for 1/2. The discipline is still not there. After "Fish Fry" is over I may need to do run off a few more K hands as Mike suggested.

Yes you a ready for the next level, 1/2 is no different than .5/1.
The reason I say run 1k more hands is to make sure your not on the top of a rush, maybe pad yourself a bit for the next level too.

Online poker will always be here. Who cares if you move up today or tomorrow

[fishstick]

The days when I was easily winning, I thought I was a poker genius. Today I am questioning all facets of my game. Struggling at poker has the added benefit of making you second guess your skill, even if the cards are not falling. I started trying to force things to happen by going for bad draws and calling down with second pair too often.

the bad side of poker. analyze your play, get over the unpleasantness, and move on. you're a good enough player.

think about what mike and fnord have said about moving up. everytime i dabble in 1/2 or 2/4, the "quality" of the play astounds me (it ain't good!). i (as you) just need to put the bankroll in place to play consistently at these levels.

[lonnie]

Fish Fry is complete. All goals attained, except for the 1.5 total aggression. Still need work on my flop/turn play.

You will find the final hand of the quest in the last picture. This hand pushed me to exactly +300.28 BB's.

[mike4066]

Congrats!
damn you started after me and got there a hell of alot faster than me

[kingsthrone]

does this mean you're gonna start Operation Shark Attack? Congratulations man, i'll probably be jumping on the Operation bandwagon soon, as soon as my classwork dims down a little (ie, Thanksgiving break)

[koolmoe]

Congrats!

Incidentally, 6.62 BB/100 over 4500 hands is a pretty good run. Don't get discouraged if things don't go so well as you move up. Be happy with anything above 2 BB/100.

[zenbitz]

I admit my sample size is small, but my observation on the diff between .5/1 and 1/2 on Party is simply this: Occasionally, you will hit a table at 1/2 that has more decent players than fish.

I track the game live, and I pay close attention to the tables' V$IP on 1/2. I like it to be above 30% (not including me!). I only recently added this feature to my tracker, so I never did it for checked it .5/1.

However, if I back track - here are the sum totals

1/2: Agg 0.551 V$IP: 29.79 ~2400 hands (tight passive)
.5/1: Agg: 0.445 V$IP: 35.61 ~2000 hands (loose passive)

I played on a table today where for 2 orbits the table V$IP was 18%! Didn't see any of you sharks there.

So, IMHO, the difference is that on the 1/2 tables (Party), you might want to drop if the majority of players are clueful.

[lonnie]

does this mean you're gonna start Operation Shark Attack?

I will be moving to 1/2 soon. I've got 9,281 hands at .50/1.00, so I think I will make it a nice even 10K hands at that level, then move up.

Some observations about Fish Fry:

1. I caught a NICE run of cards midway through this operation. When the good cards ended, I continued to play as aggressively as I was when I was catching cards. I was betting out on EVERY flop whether it hit me or not when I would PFR. Because of this, it probably took me 1,000 hands longer than it should have to reach my goal. I spent all day yesterday and a few hours today using Poker Tracker to work this leak out. Mike provided some guidance also, and Fnord put up a well timed post that helped. http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...pic.php?t=4065 I finally plugged the hole and was able to finish this thing off. It's such a fine line between being a solid aggressive player and being a total maniac.

2. My preflop play got much stronger during this quest. I was playing just about by the book poker preflop, and found I was ending up in far fewer situations where I was dominated on the flop when I hit top pair. I also finally understand that some hands, like AJ and KQ, you cannot play unless you are able to raise. A flat call or cold calling a raise is simply not an option. I got rid of a lot of my starting hands from EP.

3. You can't bluff a bad player. I knew this, yet I continually found myself betting at them as if they would lay down. They don't. It's fruitless at this level, and maybe at 1/2 also.

Overall, this kind of goal-oriented playing was very beneficial to my game and my bankroll. I highly recommend it.

Will be kicking off the next operation soon, thanks for the support.

[mike4066]

I'll race ya

ok you win!

[lonnie]

ok you win!

Not yet! You've got 900 hands to win 136 BB's. Crazier things have happened.

[johnnyawe]

{Made Sticky}

[Fnord]

Not yet! You've got 900 hands to win 136 BB's. Crazier things have happened.

I've done 75BB in less than 100 hands at 2/4...

[johnnyawe]

{Sticky removed}