Climb the ladder...

I started the day on the $11 speed sng's as I won a $6 speed sng the previous night. My fourth resulted in a win after 2 seconds and a sixth. I then took my shot at the $22's and didn't fare so well. Out of 6, I had 1 third and bricked out of the rest. I took it very easy yesterday and stopped after my demeanor changed and felt like I was running bad. No MTT's yesterday and I will get back to the $22's before I move back up to the $33's.

Bubble Boy

I had a terrible day at the turbo SNG's. I played two 60's and bubbled one and lost an all in with kk in the other. I dropped down to the $36's and just played awful towards the end. Shoving marginal hands a little too early. I was just so sick to my stomach with some of the hands that beat me and how poorly I played in the last few. When I'd make the right call with a9 and 36 gets home it can be very frustrating. That lead me to a decision. I am starting from the ground up again. I'd start with the $6 turbo's until I get a win then I'll move up a level until I "earn" my way back to the $33's. It only took two $6's to get a win and I am now on the $11's. I played one $11 and finished 3rd then called it a night. My next session will start with the $11's then get to the $22's. Sometimes you just need to get that feeling of winning again to get the confidence that you're playing well back. It doesn't even matter at what stake, it's just the WIN.

Almost... not quite

Well I decided to play a $10 MTT while playing some sng's. I played two $60's after cashing in all three $36's (a win and 2 thirds). I bubbled one when q10s couldn't hold against q8 and lost a race with a10 vs. 55 to become very short. Won a race with 55 and was still very short and lost with k9 vs. 8 10. Again I felt that I played pretty well and made a correct fold preflop with QQ early in the sng to AA.

On to the MTT. I don't remember having a hand other than an AK vs. Aq early on all in. I somehow managed to accumulate enough chips to make it from 240 people down to around 60. I won huge pot with QQ when an utg raiser shoved his KQ into a board of J 10 7 and my queens held. I managed to stay chip leader until about 22 people left and ran pretty dry. About three steal attempts into a short stack on the button failed but called with great odds and missed all three 2-1 shots. My big mistake was down to 17 people and 500/1000 blinds most stacks were between 5-15 BB's... I had 32 BB's to start the hand and was in the BB and woke up with JJ. A player that I had only witnessed shoving 20+BB's with ak earlier shoved into me with 13K. I didn't think he'd play AA or KK this way and put him on a range of AK-A10, KQs and all other pairs down to 44. My equity against this range is about 67%.. If you add AA and KK my equity drops to 61%. I thought with my stack the play is to call and he woke up with KK. I didn't suck out and dropped to 19K. My stack stayed in this area until the blinds went up to about 1600. I only had KK in this time and got no action. My stack dropped to 10K at the 1000/2000 level and lost a race with a10 vs 55. I finished 11th and was happy with my play for the most part. Still not sure about the JJ call and I am open to opinions on the hand. On the day A10 was my arch nemesis.

Heads Up Glory

I had some awesome family stuff to do yesterday to jar my emotions. So afterwards, I decided to get back on that horse and try again. I played 7 $33's, had 2 thirds and a win. I still ran like garbage but I played pretty well. After the win, I decided to bubble the $55 buy-in in glorious fashion. I ended up punching a container of peanuts several times before throwing it. It was solid. Down to 4 people, there was an all-in and call of A10s vs. 22. Either someone was getting eliminated or be left with 160 chips at the 250/500 level. Well the race was decided on the river and instead of the elim, we had a player in the blind with 160 chips. The brilliant chip leader decided to raise the next hand to get rid of the other players instead of calling and have the best chance of eliminating the player. The short stack won that coin flip and then won the next hand when his 67 out ran KJs. He now had 1440 in chips and was in the BB. I picked up QQ on button and shoved my 1800 into the middle. He called with the ever powerful j3 offsuit. And in case you were scoring at home j3 > QQ. It was pretty sweet, I'm not going to lie. He obviously forgot his helmet.

I was pretty steamed at that point and wanted to try something new. I decided to check out the Heads Up (HU) Sng's. I played a $6 HU match and after losing a race after having a 3-2 chiplead, I was down to 600 in chips. I worked my way back with selective aggression and took that match down. I was enjoying heckling my friend at one his low limit sng's and wanted to have a little fun so I sat in a $11+1 speed sng and took down a 2nd without playing a hand until it was HU. Of course I lost another 2-1 shot to get eliminated but that's besides the point. To end the night I played one more HU match against an overaggressive tool. I took that one down with a completely different style and was able to figure out what his bets and preflop raises really meant. On the day I made a small profit and by the end I had some fun.

The crime isn't getting knocked down... it's not getting back up

Deciding to stick to my previous days plan of going with the $33+3's, I started later in the day due to an amazingly good hangover. Went to the best burger place in NJ (Barnacle Bill's) to get some hangover medicine. For some reason a thick, juicy burger is the best cure.

Anyhow... I got 12 sng's in. Had 1 first and 2 seconds. I went 35 sng's without a win before bursting that bubble... it was my longest winless streak since I started keeping track a couple years ago. I ended up losing two buy-ins on the day. I broke 800 on the leaderboard. I feel like my game is still solid and i'm losing 3 out of 4 2-1 all-ins or better. I'm going to stick with the $33+3's until I book another win.

I played a $5 MTT as well. Played pretty well and got a double up early. Got through 1/2 the field, had about 2800 in chips and picked up AA utg (under the gun, i.e. first to act) and made a standard raise. From here I got a reraise all-in, and 2 all-in calls. Keep in mind the blinds at this point were 60/120. The first guy was the only to have me covered and he held AK... the next was the shortest stack at 1300 who held QQ (not a bad play considering his stack size)... the final guy had about 2600 chips and called with 10 10. Now if you have an utg raiser, a shove and a call you can be pretty sure your 10's are no good. With 20+ BB's you don't need to make this call for all of your chips. What can you beat... 99 and 88... come on. Needless to say the board came 8 9 J K 7. Your tens are good sir.... great call. Maybe I'm wrong. Can't fault the way I played... I have a 60% chance with the aces to quadruple up to 10k in chips.

Maybe I'll mix in another MTT or two today but I really want to spend the majority of my focus on the SNG's. Time to make a run at several wins.

Full Tilt was down...

Well FullTilt was down for several hours and I wasn't able to play until later. I was only able to play 9 $60 Sng's. I had 2 3rds and a 2nd on the day and my winless streak has reached 29 straight Sng's without a win. My rank has increased to 861 however. Good for me. I'm going to start my day tomorrow at the $33+3 level and try and figure out where I'm missing.

navigating the minefield's of donkville...

Well, day one since my declaration didn't go so great... I have another rule that I tend to follow... if I don't cash in around 5 straight SNG's I drop down in limits and reevaluate my game. My streak of cashless SNG's reached 6 at the $60 level so I dropped down to the $36 level. I played 6 at that level and bricked out of 4, had a 2nd and a 3rd. I felt I was playing well still and just getting a little unlucky. I lost about 80-90% of my coin flips where I was all-in.

On top of that, if you play tournaments or SNG's you realize how important it is for others to get eliminated in order to reach the winner's circle. Without going directly to the Hand History (HH) I estimate that every all-in had about a 80% survival rate yesterday. I just couldn't climb the ladder by waiting out the donks. Overall on the day I played 16 Sng's (10 $60's and 6 $36's). I had 3 2nds and 4 3rds. I have not had a win in the last 18 Sng's which had hurt my ROI.

On the brightside, I have reached 960 on the monthly SNG leaderboard and I'm hoping to break 750 by tomorrow. And score a couple of wins.

The Beginning... Well almost

About 6 months ago I had about $80 in my Full Tilt acct. Here's some history on me. I was playing live NL poker for a living for over a year until I accepted an actual job after some family issues had subsided. I needed the flexibility of the poker lifestyle to take care of some things for that time but everything was ok again so I felt the need to "go back to work." My live playing days would be significantly limited.

After entering $100 into a Party Poker account a few years ago to try out the site I built up that account to around $3000. I started with the $10 Sit-N-Go's (SNG's) and set a goal and a bankroll strategy. My inital goal was to get to the $20 SNG's but I needed $400 before I would take my shots at them... If my bankroll dipped below $300 (or 15 buy-ins) I was back to the 10's until I built back up to $400. I played 99 $10 SNG's and won $271 and had an ROI (Return on Investment) of 24.8%. To make a long story short I continued to move up in stakes until I reached the $50 buy-ins. Once I had over $2000 I was able to play in some $5-10 Stud H/L as well as the SNG's until the government's ruling that forced Party Poker to shut down. I cashed out my $3000 and was wondering what to do next.

I continued to play live and did well. I started my actual job around March and hadn't played any online poker. A close friend of mine who I played live with many times and was one of the best live NL players I had ever been around had told me that they were tearing up the MTT's on Full Tilt. I had opened a Full Tilt account around the same time that I started my Party account but never really liked the software or the games for that matter. They were slow and not enough to choose from. Back to my opening of "About 6 months ago I had about $80 in my Full Tilt acct." Since so many online sites shut down to American players, it seems that everyone migrated to either Full Tilt or PokerStars. I knew with my job I wouldn't be able to make the 1 1/4 hour trip back and forth to AC on a regular basis so I figured online was the way to go. To make any significant money I knew I'd have to rebuild my online bankroll. I decided to go about it the same way I did on Party with a little twist. I decided to really work on my Multi-Table Tournament (MTT's) game. Along with my SNG bankroll standards, I added a MTT standard. I'd play any MTT that I had at least 50 buy-ins for. SLOWLY i built from $100 to $300... started playing $5 MTT's. I made three final tables with no wins... got to $500... added the $10 MTT's. Then I started to see some real success. I made 3 final tables with two wins out of 36 entered. My profit there was over $1700. I've made some small cash outs and transfers so my account is a little over 2k.

Lately I've found that the speed SNG's are a little better for me as they force the action and many players don't know how to play them properly. I've moved up to the $55+5 level. I've played 36 and made a little over $300 and have an ROI of 14.5%. There are a few more quality players at this level and need a bigger sample size to judge success. Also I have enough in my bankroll to play the big $24 guarantees on a daily basis with some 1st prizes in excess of 5k.

That being said I have 3 new goals:
1) Make the Full Tilt High Limit SNG leaderboard
2) Build up to the $110+9 SNG's (I'll start here when i have 25 buy-ins for this level which is around $3000)
3) Finish the year with a bankroll of $20,000

Now I know there are only 3 months left in the year so to win $18k is going to be difficult. I believe it's entirely possible with the $24 MTT's and building up to the $110 SNG's. I've always felt if you aim small, you get small. Throughout this blog I'll update you all on stats and different hands. Feedback will always be appreciated. Most importantly, I'd like to thank Rex55 and RivRunsDeep for all of their help and support. TT!