4th in last nights FT 28k

so here's how it all went down:

i've been working very hard on my 6max game and had played 500 hands or so earlier in the day and lost about 1/2 a buyin. i wasn't happy with some of my plays and really felt like at worst it should have been break even. i made two calls that i should have easily laid down in small pots. so i quit for the day.

i knew i was going to hang out with some of my friends later in the day to celebrate one of my closest friends graduating from the academy. we had a couple of beers, played some horseshoes (when it decided not to rain), and ate some good food. around 9 or so i left after being there about 7 hours. i only had i think 4 beers over the course of the day and had stopped drinking entirely by about 6 so i was fine to drive home. i got home at about 9:40 or so and looked up one of my close friend who's made 3 FT's this week (Rex55). I see that she's registered for the 25K HU tournament on FT and i see her registered in a satellite for the 25k so i was a little confused. Did she make a huge scored during the day and buy right in? did she get a backer? did she tilt buy in (about .1% chance there but i guess it ran through my mind)? so i hit her up on AIM and i asked her if she was playing in the 25k.... she got all excited and said yes that she won a $500 HU satty to get her entry. this is a big step for her if she can make some noise in this tournament not only financially but for her reputation as well. she recently was interviewed for cardplayer but for her to win or even finish in the final four for that matter will skyrocket her for sure. i'm so proud of her not for just the results... but the way she has handled adversity and stayed steady and focused. this game can crush you, especially if you are an MTT player and running bad without any big scores, it can cause a panic. she handles the ebbs and flows of being a pro better than anyone i know. so good luck to her on saturday :) anyhow, since i got off track a bit. while i was IM'ing her she asked if i was going to play tonight. i said i wasn't going to but now i was all pumped up to play. i built up my smallish online bankroll from $100 all the way up to around $1400 playing $10 sng's til i had about $600 or so and started playing some $10 MTTs and winning a couple of those. so i definitely have some experience and some +$700 wins under my belt. i've made the blue lights of full tilt a few times but never in a buy in over those $10. I've been playing a couple MTT's a night for the last week or so and have been going over a couple hands with her and i told her two nights ago that i feel like my game is really solid and am ready for a score. i think amping up the aggro in me from playing the 6max games has definitely helped both pre and post flop. so i registered for the $24 28k 10pm event. i chipped up to around 4k by playing some small pot poker and then doubled up at the 50/100 level when i 3bet an utg raiser with KK and the button 4bet shoved me and i held off Ak.

i now had about 8500 in chips. now in the past when i've gotten chips early in these things i tended to spew a little bit and get over aggressive trying to build a bigger stack. i promised myself i'd stay away from that this time. i played 99 from the BB and lost about 600 in chips (happy b/c it could have been a lot more and i played the hand perfect against his range) and lost about 1400 with AQo after a cbet and turning two pair but getting shoved on. my bet should have been a little less and saved myself 200 but that was a small error and something to correct. then i was ice cold all the way to the antes... i'm pretty comfortable in these things when i have 20 BBs or so when the antes kick in. i had about 5200 and donked off about 7BBs in a steal attempt with a cbet. at the 150/300 level... a guy id seen open shove KQo earlier shoved for about 9BBs so i called with AQo for my tournament... i held off JTo and got up to 6k... with 4300 at the 200/400 level i picked up AK and shoved OOT of a player with TT and won that flip. from that point a couple steals and i hovered around 11k for a while and then shoved A6o at the 500/1000 level on the button and won a race against KJ. i don't really like the KJ call by him for that many chips especially considering i haven't been that active. back up to 20k. an uncalled reshove with TT and some other PFR's got me up to 35k. then at the 1200/2400 i had my best level. down to 22k my KK held against TT. then i raised ATs flopped an over and a FD. the BB bet pot and i thought he had enough to fold and that it was a stop and go move... i shoved over the top.... he called with TP J-kicker and i won a huge race to get me to 96k. at this point i thought it was my tournament. he berated me from the rail and i kind of laughed it off. telling me the f my mother (who had just died may 2nd) but i didn't let it get to me. i was then ice cold until the 4000/8000 level and played my usual SS mode. the table dynamics wouldn't let me steal raise so i just chilled and didn't spew. this was the true lucky hand of the tournament with 75000 chips utg i had KK and shoved into the BB who had 52000 who woke up with AA. uggggg. Bink* King on the flop... Bink*King on the turn.... and i just about double up. i just kind of survived the rest of the way... i had about 8BBs on the button at one point with 3 limpers i shoved 22 and got no callers which i loved. 88 won a race vs KJ. at the FT it seemed like every SS (shortstack) survived no matter how far behind they were. i doubled with AJ v AT. QQ beat Ak after an Ace hit and River Q sweeeeeeeet. i lost an AJ vs. KK pot.. it had gotten to 4 handed and i open shoved AQ for about 13BBs and got called by QQ in the BB and couldn't get lucky so i picked up a $2300 payday. aside from two deep finishes in ironman freerolls this was the only time i got this deep in a 1000+ person event. my previous best was 16th. the eventual winner who i lost my last hand to was part of the two bad breaks i had gotten. for his tournament he reshipped his blind over the top and was dominated and we chopped. the other bad break was an Ak vs. Aq hand that was chopped too. i was very happy with my play and never got spewy or tilted. i felt i was a HUGE favorite when we were 4handed. i just happened to run into a monster :/ . not bad though for not going to play at all. other funny thing is I NEVER play when I've had 1 drink at any part of the day. this just felt right... go figure.

This was a long post... If you read it all congrats to you and GL. back to 6max for me today.

10k hands at .50/1 NL

Well I'm 10k hands through on FT at this level and I figured I'd give the stats:
7.41 BB/100
avg tables -- 5.18

Now in this 10k hands hopefully I have learned a few things... i took 2 beats for stacks where i was over 90% to win the hand and 1 loss of a 4-1 shot...
lost one at about 75%
lost 3 races

won 2 2-1 shots
one AA vs AK
won one as a 2-1 dog
won 2 races

so that one time i got it in a 2-1 dog is the only bad beat i put on someone when i got it all in...
i think that my expected winrate is probably closer to 10 BB/100 but we'll see... i've learned a lot moving up and my post flop play has improved but it still needs work... i'm getting better at playing the opponents i'm facing and need to work on seat selection. i'm very excited at the progress i've made and hope it improves... i'm just finishing a terrible session where i tilted a bit and went from up 2 buy-ins on the day to down 1.5. i'm going to take a break and maybe come back to it later

FullTilt 6-max

It's been a while since I've written. I kind of got off the sng wagon and jumped into cash games. I hit 2nd place (I was really disappointed in my HU play considering I had a 3 to 1 chip advantage)in the bronze freeroll on FT to jumpstart my bankroll the necessary amount to start the $50 NL 6max games.

I've played over 10000 hands at that level and was at about 10BB/100 hands.

200 sngs

i did better this last 100 sngs and the total numbers are as follows:

ROI -- -5.54
1sts -- 14
2nds --31
3rds -- 33
ITM -- 39%
Avg finish -- 4.34

Lost...

Well I spent a lot of time to move up to the 22's and have finished 100 sng's.
The numbers are so bad it makes me want to puke. i have kept track of all of the times i was all in and have run well below expectation but i still think i'm missing something. if i ran at expectation i'd probably only have an roi between 5 and 8%.

through 100:

ROI -- -15.02%
1sts -- 5
2nds -- 14
3rds -- 18

ITM -- 37%
Avg Finish -- 4.23

I'm disgusted with the results. I am close to my bankroll floor before i move back down to the $11+1s to rebuild. I'm working really hard on my game. I wish the results were better. Any Sng suggestions would be appreciated.

and i'm movin on up....

through 350 sng's i've reached a goal that allows me to move up to the 22+2 sng's. i'm currently in 192nd place on the low limit sng leaderboard... my stats were:

ROI-- 12.41%
ITM-- 41.71%
1sts -- 46
2nds --47
3rds --53

I have made over $500 in profit at this level and am looking forward to the next challenge. I will start the 22's today. I am very excited.

On a side note:
Great job to Rex55 on FullTilt in the Sunday Main Event... You played amazing poker and the Main Event Blue Lights are coming your way.

302 SNG's in....

Here are the most recent numbers.....

Total -- 302 played
ROI --10.88%
1sts -- 39
2nds -- 41
3rds -- 44


ITM -- 41.06%
As of this morning I was one spot off the FT low stakes SNG leaderboard.... 251st place... we'll see where I'm at tomorrow.... I played 25 today and only had 1 win... but 7 seconds... it took until the 25th time til I got that win. Hopefully I can get in around 50 SNG's tomorrow.

200 SNG update plus AC trip

200 Sng's In

Stats:

ROI -- 11.33%
1sts -- 27
2nds -- 25
3rds -- 30

ITM --41%
AVG Finish -- 4.11

My win total is lower than I'd like to be but my ITM went up as did my ROI. I'm looking forward to the next 100.

Live Update:

I went to the Borg again for a lil live action. I played 1/2 again and picked up 219 in 4 hrs. I won a pick pot when my AA held off JT on a flop of J98 rainbow.... 2 on the turn.... 8 on the river. I'm not as happy with my play as the other day. I missed a definite value bet which would have gotten me another 20-35 dollars.

After AC update...

Went down to the Borgata yesterday afternoon with my roommate to play a little poker.... the room was packed due to the Winter Open. There were 6 5/10 NL games running which I used to play on a daily basis. But to be honest my bankroll isn't what it used to be and I'm not financially ready to play in that game again so I considered a 2/5 NL game. There was a list and my roommate is kind of new to AC cash games so I figured I'd sit with him at a 1/2 NL game and try to teach him. We played about 5 hrs. I really played probably as solid of a game as I could. There are few times I leave the Borg without regretting a single play I made. I didn't win a single huge pot like I normally do. No big hands to mention... Just two well played marginal hands that won decent pots. I picked up $146. Very happy about that... and chances are I'll go on Monday too as my roommate is pumped up to play again.

Online World:

I played some Sng's before I went to AC and did ok in my morning session. The late session I played starting at about 10 pm. I lost about 65-70% of my all in's that were a coin flip or better in 12 SNG's. I had 1 2nd and 3 3rds. Not a great session by any stretch. I was pretty steamed when I went to bed.

Now I'm done for today (Saturday) because I'm going to Philly to visit some friends and today I ran well. Had some solid results too. I played 27 SNG's.

I had
4 -- 1sts
7 -- 2nds
4 -- 3rds

that turns into an ROI of 49.7% for the day. Not bad but I'm still disappointed in the fact that there should have been more 1sts than 2nds but I didn't run great HU. From the HU perspective based on expectation I probably should have had at least 6 or 7 wins but overall I can't complain about the day. I've played 170 SNG's overall and will have a 200 SNG total update by tomorrow I'm sure.

after 101 sngs....

*****Update*****

i'm just through 101 $11+1 Turbo SNG's
ROI -- 9.37%
Cash Percentage -- 36.63%
1st -- 17
2nd -- 9
3rd -- 11

I'm keeping in mind that I had one of the worst runs of luck in this stretch. So hopefully after 200 I can at least get the ROI to 15% and the cash percentage should be somewhere in the 40% range. These stats don't include the run I went on before I restarted PokerTracker and cashed in 7 in a row.

SNG fever....

I've determined that toiling away at these small tournaments isn't for me... i built my bankroll at partypoker starting at the $10 single table sng's. i want to be able to play $24, $50, and $69 tournaments whenever i want and not worry about the effect it'll have on my bankroll. if i sit and wait for the $500 score at a $10 MTT, i'll never get where i need to be. so my intermediate goal is to get my bankroll over $2k. At that point I'll have no problem playing any of the $24's. Until then it's $11+1 Turbo SNG's until i reach my goal with the $10 MTT's mixed in. I played 66 SNG's and 2 $10 MTT's. i finished just out of the money in the MTT's and did very well in the SNG's. I restarted my PokerTracker software yesterday and will give you an update on my ROI after 100 total, 200 total.... etc. It'll be a grind but I've had no problem playing 4 tables at a time, and until I build my bankroll properly I feel like i'll just be stuck in quicksand. Wish me luck! By the way, I'm on my way down to the Borgata tomorrow. It's about 2:15 am now so in about 10 hours I'll be at my old stomping grounds.

Lil Update...

Two days ago I started playing some sng's again. I figured I could handle two open tables at a time... So if I was playing an MTT, I would keep playing $11+1 Turbo's in the meantime. I managed to pull off a streak of 7 straight cashes... (2 wins, 4 seconds, 1 third). These are the way I built my bankroll and need to make sure that they're a part of my daily schedule. Using Sng's I managed to build my bankroll from under $100 to over $2000 once before. I need to do it again so I can play the bigger MTT's.

Yesterday I had a big stack in a 350 person $10 MTT with about 70 to go. Just where I wanted to be. I happened to loose two decent pots with AA. Once against KQ and the other against 89s with about 27 to go. Then I ran card dead and pretty much was blinded out. I had 4 BB's at the 600/1200 BB level. I shoved T9 on the button and got a call from JT. I didn't get lucky and was out 19th.