Fuck micro stakes

Lets see, where to begin.

Well it’s been awhile since I updated my blog. I like to keep it for real updates only, like when things change, such as in life, in poker, whatever. I also only like to post when I have results, such as a monthly summary of earnings, rather than posting wishful thinking, about how I hope I succeed.

So this month has been, interesting… Last month I remarked that I was on my last leg of poker, having gone around the world twice, coming to the realization I might not be cut out for this, which would really make me feel like a failure because I still don’t consider poker all *that* difficult, at least not at the early levels. Yet still I could not beat any level of poker, which I guess says something about myself. I told myself I had a couple of last ditch ideas on how I might win, and if those didn’t pan out I’d have to hang it up. One of those ideas was to hire a coach, briefly. Since I feel I understand the game, and I have seen a lot traversing the stakes, all I really needed was a little leakfinding assistance. Just things I haven’t seen recreated in poker videos, or read about in online articles. Very specific stuff that I know I do repeatedly. I needed someone there to backhand me and say “now why are you doing that? Have you considered the possibility of this instead?”

The resulting lessons really opened my eyes, and I discovered I had some very severe fundamental flaws about why I should do certain things and why others do them to me. One of the biggest things I discovered about myself was that I don’t ever try to put people on a range of hands, but rather put them on an intent. Instead of saying “well I think he could have this therefore he will call, or he will bet” I would say “well he called my bet, therefore his intent is to call or bet later” or “if he folds to this check raise he has nothing…if I raise his cbet then he was just cbetting”. I would judge a persons likely future actions based upon their reaction to my bet, therefore I would always use very peculiar bet sizing tailored around each opponent that I thought would elicit a certain reaction to let me know if I was ahead or not, or if I could steal the pot. This is fine and dandy and all, and probably useful as the last part of one’s meta game, but it simply must be prefaced with the act of putting someone on a range of hands and deciding how best to play vs that range, not just vs their intent. I finally started calling out ranges on the flop, like “well he could call with any SC, any two face cards, all PP’s” and then go through the natural process of ruling out certain combinations of hands based upon flop texture. This is how it’s supposed to be done, and shockingly I NEVER did this before.

So I picked a limit I felt like giving another try at. Since im not burdened by the paranoia of bankroll mgm’t, and can easily fund myself aggressively for NL25, I figured that would be a good start, and the payback is meaningful enough to be able to take the game seriously. Im not so spewy that I run the risk of losing 20 BI’s in a single day, and due to massive issues of tilt I have to quit at 2 BI’s anyway so a 13-15 BI rule should suffice for poker variance and to keep my confidence strong when I do lose some.

The following is my September graph; excluding the 1st day in which I played a session at NL100 with 1 buyin.



The word sloppy comes to mind. What’s both sad and cool about this is that this is probably the best I’ve ever done. I’ve made more money in a single month before, but only by doing stupid shit like sitting down one-table grinding NL400 for an hour each day. For starters, I just put in 10000 hands in a single month. That’s like some sort of landmark for me. The rest is a little more clearly defined in the following graphs.

NL25 – where I started:



So I had a bit of a streak here. Not much volume, but after doubling my starting bankroll I thought “well shit maybe I don’t need to start down here, let’s see where else I can go”. I figured 13 buyins at NL50 was adequate.

NL50 – finding out where I’m at:



So I bombed. You can see I really tried, both in volume and in comebacks. Not quite sure what to make of this graph honestly. I don’t understand why my redline is always so high. I guess it must mean I bluff a lot and the blue line reflectc where I get caught or something, because my showdown winnings suck. So basically I never showdown a good hand. Statwise I played almost identical to NL25, and maybe that’s the problem. NL50 definitely feels different. NL25 is just an overall very weak passive game. Hardly anybody raises, limpers are ridiculously easy to isolate, people fold to an uncanny amount of cbets, and overall nobody ever really resists you. When they do it’s with something horrible like a stubborn PP or TPNK. NL50 seems to be where all the card runner newbies are coming out. My iso’s get squeezed, my steals get 3bet, my cbets get check-raised, and when I finally have had enough and decide im going to showdown, I’m completely dominated. So my failure here I suppose is that I haven’t adapted. I keep playing the same way I have at NL25 and it just wont work. Or perhaps what I do at NL25 is just pure luc, who knows.

As a result of my inability to adjust to NL50, I am going to hang at NL25 longer. I think once I have about 18 BI’s ill take another shot. My failure at NL50 may just be one of confidence, taking all these shots with like 10 BI’s might be affecting my play more than I realize.

Finally, actual session results:



I must shake my head in shame at the NL200 hands. Needless to say tilt still gets the better of me, and after losing 5 BI’s in the blink of an eye at NL50 and then smashing a picture on my wall, I said “fuck it” and chased back my losses. But hey, it worked. If anybody wants lessons in how to properly chase losses, gimme a shout. I think I can coach loss-chasing all the way up to 5/10 at the moment. Also goes for anyone who wants to stick their entire bankroll for a single buyin at the highest limit possible.




I must say, in the end, it does feel good to do something consistently. Putting in hands, playing for a few hours, seeing results based upon consistent play, and so on. Doubling up at an NL400 table one day, then losing it at NL600, then tripling up at NL200, and bouncing back and forth all over the fucking place sure feels lame. Hopefully having dipped my toes in the water at higher limits will have some sort of positive outcome in the future. For one, the betsizing doesn’t scare me moving up, so I’ve got that out of my system. And since I have seen what it is like to be 3bet by a reg with 89s, it wont completely blow me away when it happens again, nor will I reject the possibility that someone could do this when I have KK and somehow we’re getting it allin on a 678 flop.

Till that day…..

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EDIT: Keep in mind this blog is my online poker journal, a place to collect my thoughts. My wife says I sound like I'm offering coaching lessons. This is most certainly not the case. I simply speak in the vernacular because it's faster that way.


So I began playing some live NL200 lately. I'm way underrolled for this and have been debating on whether I should quit or not since I lack experience and am financially stressed at the moment.

I've toyed around with my own personal LAG strategy the last couple of months, derived upon nothing but my own assumptions on how people think and react to very specific conditions. Basically a poker playbook in my head for every single possible situation at the table. Due to my limited bankroll this has caused me to reconsider one particular poker philosophy, and that is your initial buyin amount. The idea is simple. What is the least amount I can risk to play a certain style, namely LAG. There are all sorts of variables to consider when you have money on the table, but I think the biggest one is what are the implied odds you are laying people with your stack. It does not take a genius for someone to have a marginal hand or draw, look at your remaining stack, and come to the "aw fuck it" decision. The question is where does this begin?

Shortstacking in an of itself is a rather complicated strategy, as is deep stacked play, at least if anybody else covers. A standard 100BB buyin gives you plenty of room to maneuver 3 streets of action without losing your shirt. But since 90% of poker is played preflop and on the flop, you can get away with plenty of standard poker moves without hitting the point of no return. This fits particularly well with a loose aggressive style as it is not your goal to be seeing too many rivers. With 50BB's you should still be able to make a preflop raise, iso-raise, or squeeze without putting people into awkward situations. You also still have room to bet, check-raise, or 3bet the flop, even in a raised pot, and maintain your FE and EQ in general. Depending upon how much preflop action there was the turn gets a bit complicated, but you shouldnt be in a ton of multiway 3bet or 4bet pots anyway so you wont find yourself here all that often. Most of your hands are going to be HU in single raised pots with enough ammo to fire 1 or 2 barrels and give up/stack off with the nuts. I think the worst situation you will find yourself in is making silly laydowns when you are getting 3:1 to call and people start scratching their heads wondering wtf you are doing. This could possibly result in a lot of unwanted action if you suddenly make yourself out to be bluffstar, but I digress.

The cool thing about buying in for half, is that you get double the buyins at your given limit (begin degen logic). That is my ultimate goal here. I want to play NL200 with 50BB's and still be able to play a solid game. If I could, I would certainly buy in full. It's always good to cover, it maximizes value, and unless you are a spewtard you arent in any particular danger of losing too much. I suppose playing halfstacked can also protect you from yourself, especially as a LAG player, letting you off cheaper when you make gross mistakes. But if a full buyin is +EV just to make sure you cover everyone at the table, well then all you need do is buyin for whatever everyone at the table has. I am going to assume that most live play involves less than 100BB stacks. I know where I do it does.

Anywho, we'll see how this goes. If I donk off half my paycheck this weekend, then I'm done. Shit, I'd rather just underoll myself for NL50 online than take hopeless shots at NL200 live.

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Poker in my city is illegal. A few police raids over the years have made the papers, but other than that the sport remains totally underground and invite only. I finally met a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy which finally brought me my first invitation to a real game. The games running in my town are 1/2, 2/5, and 5/10. Way outside of my bankroll, but since I often only play with 3-4 buyins at a limit anyway, I felt comfortable buying in at the 1/2 game. My first real live experience beyond kitchen table poker with the guys from work. And it was awwwwwwesome. Boy people arent lying when they say 1/2 live plays like .01/.02 online. Everyone limps, every single hand, and you have to make it $30 preflop to thin out the herd. Try making a standard $6-$10 raise preflop, the whole fucking table is in lol. You dont know how many times someone has made it $50 preflop, everyone folds, and they show AK or JJ and proudly say "I had to protect my hand".

So my first couple of nights went ok, I finished up like $60 or so just playing ABC, as I was pretty nervous and terrible at counting chips and shit. I kept misfiring and throwing in chips before announcing my intent and being forced to just call or make stupid automatic minraises etc. After one weekend though my confidence was high and I felt very comfortable around the table. Everyone is cool and seems to really like me. They all have good attitudes and it's a very friendly game. The host said he was happy to bring an internet player to the table to see how differently "we" play. Some kid was there with a pokerstars shirt on but other than that they were mostly old and middle aged guys. Most have nicknames, like "doc" and "scooter" etc. The house provides a full open bar and a nice array of snacks. The host also makes sandwiches for people and cooks other forms of grillable shit. Table side service for whatever you want, it's a pretty fuckin cool operation. I think the rake is like 5% starting at $30.

Then came my second weekend. I absofuckinglutely demolished these players. I just played hyper aggressive, Doc.Lemon style, FPS'ing my ass off and it worked pretty well. In reality I just ran well though, as I kept getting paid off by TPNK type hands and other retarded shit. Then there was today. I basically sat down and started bombing players perflop and on the flop, and I just couldnt shake them for the life of me. I even got called out for raising too much preflop at one point lol. And thats when I began to rage. Silently of course, I'm not about to disrespect any of these guys who have graciously accepted me in their circle at a time where everyone is freaked out and suspicious of the next police raid, which have been described as full SWAT with firearms drawn and bullet proof vests adorned. Pretty ridiculous really. Each time a raid has been successful it has been with the use of an informant, so you really have to earn your way in.

Anyway, back to the hands. So here I am squeezing OTB with Ax and sometimes any two, and I guess they picked up on this finally, and apparently their strategy to combat this was to just call with any two OOP when I raise. And I just kept getting outflopped every damn time. And the sickest thing was I flopped 2 fullhouses and a set at one point, and got zero action, even though I played them exactly the same as all the others. I flipped up the nuts from time to time and then 83s other times, trying to mix it up and generate some action. Just would not work. They were more than happy to continue limp calling whatever the fuck, and catch any piece and just check-calling it all the way to the river.

I finally chilled out and just went back to ABC. If I had AQo, I raised regardless of preflop action. If I missed a 4way pot I just c/f. If it's HU I cbet 100% and then just c/f. I managed to piss away 2 buyins over the course of 5 hours, just bleeding chips from iso-raising and cbets + double barrels on occasion. They just showed up with a hand every single goddamn time. Not good hands mind you, but hands. And of course fish love nothing more than to limp AA and AKs UTG, but I never fell victim to a trap. Just one big annoying downswing all day.

Anyhow, I'll be going back next weekend, since I'm at breakeven status right now with my winnings/losses. I planned to give the live poker ring a couple of shots. Meaning I'll show up with 2-3 buyins per game (honestly I shouldnt lose more than 2 buyins in a single session playing 1 table live vs a bunch of fish. If I do then I'm doing something wrong and will come back next time to re-evaluate my game).

I dont really want to be sinking $400 every shot I take, I'd rather play NL50 or NL100 online with that shit. I especially wanted to break in to MTT's but simply dont have the time to put in the hours. But if I can become the local Tom Dwann and clean up at these tables, it might just pad my bankroll enough to take a trip to a real casino one of these days. I like one table poker better than multi table grinding, and I like live better than online already. My vision of being a professional poker player is one mixed between lots of live casino play, and SOME online play. I do not wish to be the next internet superstar nor do I think I ever would. Online is a different game. Too many professional grinders and cardrunner clones running around. Besides, being a live pro is where you go to play the WPT and WSOP etc. I would like to be very used to this rather than switching between and failing because im not used to it.

So heres to another shot this weekend. If I fail the next 2 weekends in a row then I'm done for awhile, as I cant afford to lose $1000 every month right now. Cheers.

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So I signed up for a poker training site last month some of you may have heard of called PokerVT. It is a site started by Daniel Negreanu meant to visually explain his latest strategies behind poker.

I had a few hiccups during the initial signup phase where after being charged for service and logging in for the first day, my account was inexplicably terminated due to a technical glitch which somehow claimed my account had expired. According to technical support, this is actually a problem several members have complained about. Technical support resolved the issue that day, however my second month billing cycle started about a week ago, and the same thing happened again. This time technical support was unable to resolve the issue. So for over a week now I have been unable to login to the site, as it claims my account has expired, even though they have clearly billed me for this month. After getting fed up calling technical support multiple times a day I decided to ask for a refund in full for this month's service until they have resolved the problem. At that moment I was told by someone claiming to be the manager that the problem had finally been resolved and I have nothing to worry about anymore. Naturally I'm a bit skeptical since the problem was also "resolved" about 8 times in the last week. Regardless, I still requested this month be refunded to me since I have not been able to use the service for a full month on the pretense that they have overbilled me. Management refused. I then asked to have my account canceled and since I have been prevented from using the service this month due to technical difficulties on their end, requested a refund for this month's service. They refused again. At this point the manager was actually talking over me any time I spoke, rudely interrupting everything I said going on some long circular diatribe about how if I'm canceling then why should I be refunded, and if I'm staying why should I be credited, completely disregarding an entire week of failed access to the site.

So I have filed a dispute with my credit card that I was billed for services never rendered and they will launch an investigation claim. I have also put a block on future payments to their site since they have proven they cannot be trusted with my financial details to continue billing me. I have screenshots of the failed login screen which shows the pokervt account information with timestamp and my credit card records showing the charge they placed this month for membership that my bank has requested be faxed to them.

Ultimately I would rate this site a 1/10. The customer service is terrible, the management is rude and clearly has no experience in customer support. I wish I had recorded the phone call because it was laugh out loud hilarious and would result in his immediate termination if heard by the executive branch of this company. The site suffers from technical glitches which will disrupt access to your account for prolonged periods of time. They will also continue billing their customers regardless of whether you are an active member or not.

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I had originally planned on reloading for cash games but came to this wonderful epiphany that playing a super loose aggro style with lots of 2.3x raising and barreling and shit might actually be more suited towards big MTT tournament play. I only wanted to play like $1 or $5 MTT's, but since sunday is so juicy I figured what the hell, might as well get my feet wet and possibly walk away with a new life roll, so I joined mostly $10 tourneys.

I ran into a lot of confusing situations to say the least. Just fishy players making really weird bet sizes, or jamming 100 BB's to an UTG raise etc, I was completely lost in most of my hands. When I wasnt shooting blind, I was playing shortstacked on the button and running into aces in the blinds. Now that the big tourney's are over I can focus on the el-cheapo's and just look at them as practice. In fact I may have to pay off some fish just to get a handle on what people are doing with their odd bets, it's really like nothing I've ever seen before. I have a feeling they're just completely bluffing at pure random b/c poker is all about bluffing, but we'll see.

I'd say the biggest leak in my game revolves around proper stack management. How to use my chips effectively and how not to get short stacked too early in the game. I have no idea how to fix this yet, so I'm just gonna keep plugging away at it until I seem to get some sort of rhythm for these things, as they are quite different from cash.

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Man that took long enough. Dunno why I tortured myself for a week with $13 playing 1/2 cent. If I learned anything I learned one thing, which harks back to what caused my inevitable downfall to begin with, and that was table control. Considering I play one-table exclusively, with a limited bankroll, very certain table conditions must exist in order for me to make a profit. If I played with a larger bankroll and more tables I could comfortably play a certain limit and let variance get washed away by statistics. But I dont. I play a high variance style, so I have to do certain things to try and nullify as many other forms of variance as possible, and most of that revolves around table selecting. Whatever the reasons, if a table is looking to be very high variance already, such as maniacs or stations, I simply have to pack my bags and walk away. I have such ego and poker pride that it kills me every time to do this. However considering penny stakes are mostly maniacs and calling stations I gradually became more and more comfortable telling myself out loud "well you're out of position against two crazies and a station. You have lost control of this table." And then leaving. I literally have to say it out loud for it to have any effect on me.

I was approaching the point in my poker career where I was going to have to seriously ask myself "can you do this?". Last month's success put a little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. This months failure was just a lesson. I have about 1 step left on the poker ladder before I have to admit I'm a losing player, and that step will finally be coaching. I intend to reload myself for NL50 or NL100 and grind one-table again, and if that fails, I will concede that my thoughts on teaching myself a loose aggressive style with a limited bankroll are flawed and not a winning approach to the game, at which point I will then seek coaching and put my poker career in someone elses hands. And if THAT fails, well I'll probably have to hang it up since I will be nearing the 2 year mark and remember Fayth once saying "if you have yet to turn a profit after 2 years, you should quit poker" which I believe. In fact this looming deadline has been haunting me these last few months, since poker has been my escape route to financial freedom which I so desperately desire. I'm sure I'll find a couple of last second excuses to keep me in the game, like giving a serious run for tournaments (I think I have played like 10) or maybe even be a gay SNG grinder. But those endeavors will cost even more money to finance than 6max cash, and I will be starting from the ground up, so add a bunch of training and practicing in the mix and it might just not be feasible.

For the record, my idea on how to make a living at this game isnt to run a roll all the way up to play durrr and ivey. Once I reach a certain threshold I will then go into super bankroll nit mode and do the whole 300 BI thing to maintain myself at a limit which can pay the bills every month. Something like 5/10 or 10/20 should be livable for a one-table grinder (I have to play higher stakes to make the same monthly profits a lower limit grinder can who plays more tables and hands). I'm simply trying to thrust myself out of months if not years of micro stakes grinding and get to a limit where I can sustain my livelihood quick. Im not too worried about the experiences I'll miss at micro stakes (i have like 100,000 hands at them anyway) as I consider them a total joke anyway and offer nothing to a high stakes pro, not even discipline. The high stakes games are so radically different from micro stakes the two cant be compared imo, so I consider it a waste of time. Basically I'm using my real-life income to finance my poker career rather than using my poker bankroll to finance my poker career.

No interesting graphs to post, my last blog showed my losing sessions and I never recovered so minus another 50 bucks off the top and im officially at 0.

On a side note, I think i might move back to stars. FTP rakeback just turned out to be a big "meh" for me. The most I ever got was like $80 in one week and that was when I was playing 2/4. That is about the size of your average turn bet or flop cbet, so the way I see it, who gives a shit. A months worth of rakeback playing one-table is passed around every 5 minutes just playing normal everyday poker. Plus I am a little bit ticked that I got offered such a weaksauce bonus when other people are getting $500. So fuck it. I kinda miss stars anyway.

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- "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor...That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving" -

So while running wild and crazy up the limits and hitting a wall I took pause for a moment. I decided I had a good run, and I needed to have something to show for it. So I cashed out pretty hard. I had what seemed to be a rather working style, at least working when table conditions were just right. Right before cashing out I decided to change a few facets of my game in response to certain players at the table I wasnt winning against. My new strategies were no good and only caused further losses. I think I switched up my game one more time with no success, so I stopped and grabbed what dough I had left and made a run for it. I left myself rolled for NL200 and took some seriously bad beats against against some maniacs, which I always told myself to avoid on a limited bankroll. By then my tiny roll was a complete mess and I lost the drive.

I was left with $18. I got a little rackback which brought me to $50, so thats where I'm out now. I decided to try my hand at the dollar table SNG's. I've boooked about 60 and I have..... $53. Just doin the ole sitout until bubble style and then shoving constantly. Fish seem to really hate being pushed around and start spite calling me with J5o and stuff just to knock me out I guess. Sometimes I have a hand and get sucked out on, sometimes I dont. I have a TON of bubble finishes, which is pretty frustrating. I would rather get knocked out in 5th or 6th where it's understandable for them to play a lot looser. But goddamn these people will throw away their entire tourney on a junk hand just to say "bye bye" when they stack you with trash. I dont think I really want to play these things anymore. I dont have any particular experience or insight into winning them. Think I read an article on ICM a year ago and just understand to use my FE + dead money while the short stacks wait on each other to donk out. Whats the worst is I keep finding myself seated to the right of some deepstacked idiot making it impossible to steal.

Technically I have enough roll to go back to NL10 if I one-table, so I guess I'm gonna start doing that again. I took $200 to $3000 in a single month before, so I should be able to hit $1000 with this roll

Just hoping I havent forgotten how to play cash. I was hoping to be quitting my job by fall or winter, lawl. But I'm glad I decided to have some fun with my earnings. Was able to book a trip with my homeslice for a week in a nice 4 star hotel, all expenses paid, and buy a blu-ray player with wifi built in and netflix capable streaming which is ridiculously badass. First movie watched, PRIMER.

Which brings me to the conclusion. EVERYBODY WHO READS THIS MUST GO WATCH THE MOVIE PRIMER RIGHT THIS SECOND. Holy fucking christ I will be watching this movie a good 2 times further before I fully understand it. If you liked the time travel odyssey that was Donnie Darko, you will LOVE primer. Darko was a bit more mysterious and creepy, but primer is just downright utterly fascinating. I cant begin to do justice to this film by describing it, so any geeks who love complicated science fiction time travel with a script that doesnt "dumb it down" for the general masses will be talking about this movie for weeks.

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Table selection: the act of sitting at a table where you are most likely to make the largest profit.

Typical poker theory suggests a pretty basic premise of table selection that says if you can find bad players, profit will follow. But I prefer to look at it as a table where players are most likely to make the biggest mistakes vs YOU, not just poker in general. Mistakes which you yourself can most profitably capitalize on at ALL times, not just the mistake of someone going allin preflop with AQ when you have AA. I think table selection can go beyond just finding the "fishiest" table out there.

For a true grinder, this simply means counting on the laws of poker to come in your favor over the long haul. A player can only limp ace rag so many times before he finally hits 2 pair out of position in a raised pot vs your set. Your job is simply that of a sniper, waiting until the wind is just right so as not to send your bullet off mark, and BAM! You got em. But this can take quite a while, and even then sometimes the natural laws of poker variance will ruin your shot that you have been ever so patiently waiting for.

For everyone else, theres "your edge". Your abilities as a player to know how to get your opponent to do the wrong thing, be that folding when he shouldnt, raising, or even better, calling. This is the definition of a good player and must be learned eventually, at least if your desire is to make it to the top. How you decide to accomplish this is up to you. You can go through the natural poker progression, simply having the information absorbed into your psyche through playing hundreds of thousands to millions of hands, simply picking it up as you go along. Or you can actively seek to attain this knowledge, by putting yourself in the situations that require it, and remembering what happened so it stays in your arsenal of knowledge. Like choosing to pick up a book and learn a language, or simply moving to Japan and listening to people talk, this is my goal.

You see I have neither the time nor patience to try method number one. I also have some inherent beliefs that it’s simply not necessary, and potentially disastrous for your learning (i.e. becoming robotic and having a hard time unlearning and readjusting to radically different play at higher stakes). To achieve this I have thrusted myself into multi-level thinking by playing exclusively one table at a time, focusing on every single hand, even hands I am not playing in, and then using what I observe to play as many pots as possible against people. You know, the whole "play the man, not your cards" thing. Of course having a good hand helps, because sometimes somebody just aint foldin, and thats where you want to capitalize on this.

So how does this all relate to table selection? Well, as mentioned earlier, a typical grinder may seek out the easiest table to play at, where he can rely more on his cards and an opponents inability to play correctly vs them. However if your goal is to strictly play the player, and use your cards only as backup when things dont go your way, your criteria for finding a table changes dramatically. To date, I have had my best success at tables consisting mostly of nits and tags, with the least amount of "fish" possible. If I'm going to play a certain way against a certain player just because it's him, I have to be able to predict what he's going to do. Unlike other forms of competition where you lack information such as STARCRAFT, predicting someone's action and knowing what hand they have can still result in a loss. In starcraft, if you play against a newbie who puts one scv on each mineral patch only, it doesnt matter what he might accidentally end up doing with his strategy, you will simply beat him every time, no matter what. There is no variance, there is no luck, mathematically an inferior player of this magnitude simply cannot win. In poker this is not the case. There is an element of chance. So problem with this lies in the fact that certain players simply NEVER rely on chance. These are the players you can actually play against. The other guys require you to have a hand, which requires you to wait, and which requires you to have money to sustain losses when the best hand doesn’t win.

Due to this standard archetype for playing poker, questions of how much money you really need come in to question. It has been proven many times that one can mathematically play perfect poker, meaning their hand is statistically likely to win, and lose 20 times in a row. Well if this is possible you better be able to reload 20 times at a table. However if you ignore the math, and simply play based upon what you expect your opponent to do, you are less likely to lose as often, simply because if you are right, you win the hand, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter what your hand is, if you KNOW he is going to fold, and I mean know it like a Jamaican psychic, then you are playing perfect poker. Now you can still find yourself in a situation where you know both that your hand is the statistical favorite, AND your opponent will go allin, and still lose, but this will not happen frequently since the odds of a perfect setup occurring at the same time you know what your opponent will do are far more rare. And the times in which you do lose can be easily offset from all the future hands that you will play perfectly.

So back to table selection, if you intend to try to control the outcome of a hand based upon your actions rather than the strength of your cards, you need to find a table where players can be herded around the stable at your discretion. What I have finally figured out shockingly enough, is that this is NOT the fish! I have perpetually held to the accepted advise that I should want to play vs fish so they make mistakes. Unfortunately the kind of mistakes they make are not the kind of mistakes I need them to make in order to win! I need players to fold, or play back at me, not call me to the river with any pair, because clearly I cant win the hand at showdown if I am bluffing and was looking for a fold, the fold another type of player can be expected to make.
There are two types of poker players in this world. Those who care about money, and those who don’t. The players that just don’t care about losing are the players I will not be able to beat, at least not very often. My perfect storm will still come on occasion and I will turn the nut flush vs their straight and win just like anybody else can. But I will lose far too many pots in between battling it out with them as I have no control.

Table selection for me from now on shall consist of one thing and one thing only, table control. If I lose control of the table, I must leave. If I cannot get players to perform a certain action, then I am now playing my cards and my cards only, and if my cards suck I am in some serious trouble. Every few days I sit down at a table which looks juicy, and then mr. maniac fish comes along averaging out 80% vpip for over an hour. My initial thought has been “yesss!!”, and yet every single time I lose to them, and lose BAD. Consider the following show of results today:

Hi, my name is yallan and I play 100% vpip for the first 98 hands. I finally cooled off to a paltry 75.5% vpip as players adjusted to me.

These situations simply do not happen vs thinking players. You will almost never find yourself involved in spots like these vs someone who you know is actually making serious attempts to win the game. While these spots favored me, I was unlucky and I cant have that right now. I am far less likely to have “unlucky” setups against thinking players. With the above hands I had no ability to dictate his actions, I lost my ability to know when I even had the best hand. As a result, I was flying blind. Flying blind can be ok if you are capable of sustaining significant losses. Flying blind with a bad hand is probably not a good idea no matter how big your bankroll. But flying blind without the ability to let poker variance fuck you is a recipe for disaster. You simply cannot count on your ability to survive 6 or 7 flips in a row if that is all you can afford, which is why I put myself in situations that will hardly ever result in a flipping scenario.

So, as I continue to show impressive results one day, and then scratch my head in disbelief as an obvious fish rapes me the next day, I think I have finally figured out what I need to do. And that is AVOID THE FISH. That’s right, tuck my tail between my legs and run away to find another table. Because ultimately it has nothing to do with him playing poorly, it has everything to do with me playing properly. If some experienced pro gives you trouble at the table, there is nothing wrong with leaving. The table is –EV for you, regardless of the reason. I find playing against 70+ vpip maniacs to be –EV for me. Not because I refuse to tighten up, but because even if I do tighten up I can still lose, repeatedly, and I cannot afford that. So I will find another table, a +EV table. For me +EV will mean a table in which I feel I have a grasp on player tendencies, I know what they will do given a certain line of action, and then I can use that to control the hand. I don’t care if Phil Ivey sits at my table, if he folds every time I check-raise then I am in control and know what to do when he doesn’t fold. But if I am at a table with a fish and he just plays completely random, I can only play the best hands to insure my likelihood of winning, and even then, as said countless times by now, I might not win.
So the moral of this story is that I will make serious attempts like never before to actively and precisely table select at ALL times during the game. Not just find a table and stick with it forever. The moment I notice a shift in the game, one in which I cannot or do not want to adapt to, I simply must find another table. This will probably happen far more frequently that most people switch tables. I can end up switching tables every 60-80 hands, whereas most people put in around 200-300 before deciding maybe they should move on.

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I was starting to get worried that I might actually go pro at this game. I'll let this blog serve as a reminder of how badly I can fuck up.

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Well I havent updated my blog in forever, having mostly kept to myself as far as poker theory goes, perhaps because I'm on to a few ideas I dont want to talk about, perhaps to save myself the embarrassment of more fail posts. Regardless, what makes this update special is the fact that I'm actually posting results. This is a first for me, because until now I have never had results worth posting. I started this blog after reading about Daniel embarking on this 5 buyin bankroll strategy as a personal challenge just to see if he could do it. The idea being that since he only plays 1 table, 500 big blinds is plenty to play with. Well I also only play one table, so I figured what the hell, gives me new purpose in poker life.

Now I havent exactly kept true to this BRM strategy until this month, basically because every time I had some limited success I would take my newfound roll and use it for other things. Like suddenly abandoning the challenge and putting in time at the SNG's, or just taking the roll and making a legitimate attempt at grinding the micro's properly.

But before I go on to that, lets get on with business. My first ever results post! Why? Because it's the first month I have shown any profit! EVER!






Now I'm sure i'll get some *eyes roll* responses because this hardly seems legendary. But 5000 hands playing a single table at a time actually take some work! So I WILL sit here and be proud of this as if I have accomplished something and I WILL consider this sustainable after a 30 day run.... FUCK YOU, LET ME HAVE THIS!@

And now, the coup d'état, drum roll please. My lifetime graph results. Rather than having much to say, I'll just let the graph do the talking. The captions pretty much sum everything up.



And lastly, the awesome sauce in all of this is that I'm almost out of my poker deficit. I had never lost sight of the fact that technically, I'm still down. I swore I would never let myself put on the horse blinders and forget about where I'm really at as I all too often see from those who have never shown a profit yet think they are the shiznit during their single good run of the week at one table.

So where do I go from here? Well, to be honest, I'm pick pocketing my own account here as I desperately need to pad my real life bankroll due to such shitty economic circumstances these days. I've had my salary cut a whopping 35% this year, and of course every other expense has gone nowhere but up. I'm grateful to still have a job, no doubt the result of simply being friends with upper management, since we have laid off about 30% of our workforce and they could let go of me if they wanted. The good thing is, at the stakes I'm playing, a single good session gives me all the cashout I need. The bad thing is, a single bad session means a drop in limits, or potentially blowing my poker career. I have an opportunity right now. I could embark on some training, make a real case for myself and play NL100. People can practically make a living at NL100. Or I could donk it up a little with fewer tables at NL200 even. But neigh, I feel the planets are aligning, fate is descending upon me, and that I have a rare opportunity here to thrust myself to a level where I can become financially secure just in the nick of time, like when my company collapses. I'm going to continue on this run, and hope to do something amazing here, beat Daniel to the punch, and get myself out of this rat hole called every day life.

So here's to another silly graph next month. If you dont hear from me by then, I probably blew it.

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