Year End Review

Well it's been an up and down year for sure in terms of playing poker. From winning a good amount of money both live and online in the first 8 months of the year, to losing the last 4 months. I guess that's the way it goes sometimes.

Online I finished the year down 20 dollars in tournies/sngs for the year(5k games). Cash games I was up around 185 dollars. Alot of time and energy to make a measly 165 dollars! I did manage to make an additonal 300 or so via a pending bonus and points milestones.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but I have learned which games I do well in and which ones I don't. I'm a winner at 1.10 45's, 2.20 180's, and 3.25 45's turbos. I'm down in MTT's and 6.50's (9 man, 18 man, 45 man). The games I'm winning at I've played at least 1000 of each so I'm pretty confident that I can beat these games long term. As for the 6.50's I don't have a large sample number, so it's possible I can also beat these (I think would have to improve my game).

On the cash side I was a winner in .01/.02 PLO. However, they have change the rake in this game to make it much tougher to beat (more on this later).

Live poker was good overall although it feel off at the end of the year. Just remembered that I was keeping records and found them. I stopped 1/2 way through the year, but have only played a few times since. Also included payment into the poker league. New Years resolution to update this each time I play! Anyway, the year end tally is around +1500. Being I so rarely play live it's such a small sample size to really determine anything from it. Other then I ran good at times.

A final note if you still reading (lol), I've started updating my twitter almost everytime I play. So you can follow me there (MNPuck). To sum it up was a decent year overall, hoping things will turn around for 2011.

MNPuck

November Update

Wow it's been forever since I've updated this. So many things have happended that I don't know really where to begin. I guess to be blunt I've went through some very tough times with poker. Have almost quit the game many times for various reasons which I may or may not go into this post. Sorry if this post is sort of out of order and what not, I'm just going to do I mind dump and see what happens.

First thing that comes to mind is my giant 'swoon' since the last post. I hit some rough times in both the 2.20/180's and 3.25/45's. My ROI jumped down from around 25-30% in both games to almost 10%. To be honest I started losing some hands and the started playing bad because of it. Instead of being very aggressive, I started losing faith that I was making the right plays and backed off when I know I should be staying aggressive. It was definately a humbling experience.

My account on pokerstars reached about 1400 dollars at it's peak. After a few months I found myself down to around 700 dollars. I had to ask myself were all the money went. After doing some reasearch I noticed I was down around 300 or so over 3 months in multi table tournaments. Also I swapped 200 for full tilt money to play in some mini ftops events. So I lost about 200 or so in the 45/180 SNGs.

So sometime in October I cashed out my entire 700 roll. I honestly need the money for other things at the time and was really sick of playing anyway. I put 200 some back in a few weeks later and then cashed that out because I wasn't enjoying playing.

I spent most of October and Novmember away from poker, part of me thought it was for good. However, I did miss playing some days. People who know me understand that I've had addiction problems with things in the past. Some would quickly point to poker as another one for me. To be honest I can't say that it's not an addiction for me. However, it's helped me through some times in my life.

I've almost been sober from drugs and alchohol for 2 years. Some of that is because of poker, I really believe this. My 2008 year of losing showed me that I can not play poker while under the influence of drugs or alchohol. It's just not possible for me to be a winning player that way. If I'm sober there are no guarnetees that I'll win, but I have a much better chance.

Do I want to be sitting around playing poker everyday in the future? Not really, I actually want to go back to school. At this point poker is a good trial run for me in that regard. It takes concentration while playing, time to review sessions, and requires me to read books to try and stay ahead of the game. Even things like reading weren't possible for me 2 years ago, I still struggle with it some today. It's getting better and hopefully with time I'll be able to feel comfortable enough to return to school.

So my plan is to play the 2.20/180's exclussively from this point forward. No MTT's, except if it's SCOOP or maybe MiniFtops, and I'm only playing 1 or 2 tables of them. My results mixing in 3 or 4 Mtt's with 12 or so SNGs are just terrible. I was playing the 1.10/45's, because my bankroll was low. However I've been working more hours at work then normal so I have some extra money again to give the 2.20/180s a run. This are the games I want to be playing at the moment anyway.

On the live play side I've cooled off considerably from my previous play. I joined a league for 250 and have yet to cash (top 3 of 9 or 10 man table cash), in the first 3 months. There's also a point system which pays out at the end of the year, that I'm not looking so good in either. I also booked two losing sessions. One -80 at Diamond Joes and -130 at a local cash game. The truth is I'd rather take the 200 buyin at Diamond Joes and stretch it over some time and play online.

My Stars account is at 97 from the 110 I put into it. I have about 250 reserved that I can deposit if I need to. So what if I bust this bankroll? Truth is I'm not sure, I'll definately have to reasses things. The total 350 bankroll is almost enough (around 440 is recommend for a winning player to have as a bankroll for 2.20/180s), to know if I'm really a winning player.

Thanks for reading, I'll do an update next month.

MNPuck

Quick Update

Hey everyone,

I'm waiting for some things to download, so I thought this would be a good time to update my blog. I've been having some good results online recently (havent been playing live) and thought I'd post a few things.

First off, I've been mainly playing the 2.20 180's and 3.25 45 turbos on pokerstars. Had a sick run and was running at almost 30% ROI in both games for a time. Have cooled of recently and still have around 30% for the 2.20's and 23% for the 3.25's. One big change I did make was to hire a coach to help me out with these games. He presented me some situations in which I was giving up chips in plus EV situations. Since my roll was getting up there, I also gave the 6.50 45 mans a try and had very poor results. I think I'll stick with the 2.20's and 3.25's for now. I've gotten to were I can play alot of tables at a time on these and play them in sets so I only have a few tables open when it comes final table time.

Hiring the coach made me study my game much more then I normally do. I'd recommend this process for anyway that is looking to get started in a game and beat it. However, one word of warning do a good background check on your coach before hiring him/her. I still need to study more and this is something I'm currently trying to set more time aside for.

Today I decided to mix things up and play some 1/2 8 game mix. Hit a few really big hands in PLO. I feel playing this is a very nice switch from playing the SNGs. One things is I only play 2 of these tables at a time and so I try and actually put alot more thought into each play (part of this is because I dont know some of the games). Playing this may decrease my bankroll somewhat, but I feel it's worth the change.

Other then that I've been reading alot of poker books. I've finished the Harrington triology on Hold'em for tournaments and started reading Kill Everyone. Both are excellent reads and recommend them.

Well my software finally downloaded, so I'm going to go for now.

MNPuck

July 2010 Update

Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this. My goal is to start updating this weekly. We'll see if that happens or not. Alot has happend since my last blog, since it's been so long I'll strip this down and post some of the highlights from live and online play.

I'll start with live play, I've had a few big wins and not really any losing sessions:

- In April played in a series of 4 events over 4 days, walked away +1000
- Went to Canterbury Park in June to check out the remodel and played 3/6 and finished +400
- Placed 2nd in a tournament at Diamond Joes, lost some in cash game but finished +180
- Last night played in a dealers choice cash game and finished +200

Those are the winnings sessions, the losing ones havent magically been removed I've had a few times were I've broken about even. For example, played in a 2 or 3 tournies at treasure island and cashed small in one breaking me about even for the series of tournies.

Online has been much more up and down. I'll skip over most of the details and go into what games Im playing on there now. I've been mixing 3.25 45 man and 2.20 180 man turbos on stars. Current ROI is about 15% for the 3.25's and 10% for the 2.20's. I was on a hot run in the 2.20 but cooled off and started doing well in the 3.25's. I've been using SNG Wizard to study my endgame as I feel that's the weakest part of my game on those. I've also been playing some 2 and 3 dollar mtt's looking for a nice score. Been close a couple of time but just cant seem to get over the hump and make it to the final table. My account has turned into a pretty nice bankroll for these games, so Im happy with that.

Well, that's about it for now. I just got done with work (which is something new since I last blogged), and am getting ready for some MTT's and 45 and 180's. I'll update again soon.

MNPuck

Start of 2010

Going into 2010 I had around 400 dollars in my Pokerstars account. I started off the new year by playing some .01/.02 PLO and soon had 500 in the account. At this point i was getting sort of bored with PLO. I was playing around 9 tables at a time all tiled/overlapped on my notebook so I would get worn out quickly while playing.

Thus, I decided to give SNG's a try. I know during the pokerboom (2005-2006) these were gold mines and I thought that still might be the case. I ordered and read SNG Strategy by Collin Moshman and purchased SNG Wizard to help me out with my game.

I thought the best deal rake wise and skill wise was the 6.50 single table turbos on Pokerstars. At first everything was great I was running super hot, within a week I was up about 175 dollars and had almost 700 in my account. I even made one of the SNG leaderboards one week and received 20 dollars for it. Then things went south. All the flips and 60/40's I was winning before went the wrong way. My account took a huge dive and I soon had only around 400 dollars left in my account.

I knew I was getting somewhat unlucky, but I decided to quit playing the 6.50's. Of course because I was losing was part it. The main reason is that I didn't find alot of 'leaks' in peoples games at this level. Sure there were some bad players, but most were pretty competent. Basically a single table turbo SNG boils down to pre-flop pushing. The blinds get so high so quick that you basically have two options: push or fold pre-flop. Most players at this level are fairy competent when it comes to this aspect of their play. They know when to push. Tools such as SNG Wizard and other ICM software has allowed for most players at this level to be good late in the tourney when it comes to the push/fold decision.

Therefore I had to re-evaluate what direction I wanted to take, or if you will what games to play. If poker was a zero sum game (ie no rake or entry fees), this decision would be easier. But, with house fees this becomes are harder question. In the last year I've beat pretty much every game I've tried if you take out the house fees. However, in reality you have to figure this into the equation. If your serious about making money in poker you have to play in the game were people make the most mistakes. The relative question becomes which game do I have the biggest edge over my competition.

To answer this all I have to do is look at my Holdem Manager database. The two cash games I'm beating on Stars are .01/.02 PLO and .01/.02 NL. My winrate on NL is a little higher but over a much smaller hand number. While I may have more experience in NL then PLO, I have to factor my opponents into the equation. I think it's safe to say that the average player at the .01/.02 level is much better at NL then PLO. The reason is pretty obvious as poker nowdays is pretty much thought of as NL. The exposure of NL (TV, Books, Forums, etc.), has made the 'average' NL player much better over the years. The same cannot be said for PLO as it's rarely on TV(saw it once Aussie Million Cash Game) and books have just started coming out within the last year.

Another factor is that NL teaches you some very bad habbits for playing PLO. Since the games look and feel the same (except u get 4 cards vs 2), people will often play it the same. This leads to what I call some 'rookie' mistakes in PLO. Maybe next blog I'll cover some of these.

Based on the above I decided to go back to the grind in PLO .01/.02. I found some software (Table of Interest), that allowed me to play 15 or 16 tables at a time. Basically playing what's called robot poker (or peddling the nuts for the most part), however I would occasionally through a curveball to a 'regular'. I played around 10k hands in a few days and went +50. This is pretty consistent with my winrate I've established at this level.

Based on my stats I would make $360 for every 100k hands I play in PLO .01/.02. Problem is to get the kind of volume to make it worth while, I would need to 15/16 table. This figures to about 1000 hands per hour, or 3.60 an hour. Not great, but something positive at least. The great downside to this is playing that many table burns you out real quick. I can only play that amout for 90 minutes before needing a break. It's doable but very hard on one self. Another downside is you dont get many FPP, because the rake on the game is very low. So after a few days of grinding I though about another possability.

This lead me to thinking about short stacking. It's a strategy I dont really like, but I believe can be effective. In William Jockush's Pot Limit Omaha: Understanding Winning Play, he talks about the benefits of short stacking. Basically when you get all-in and there are others playing a side pot, you have an advantage as these players may bet each other out thus increasing your equity. Like I said I personally hate short stackers, but I'm not playing to make friends.

So the last few days I've been short stacking .10/.25 PLO. I was up around 60 right away, but feel on some hard times and am currently only up about 10. But, I think this strategy can work and playing the 'all-in' advantage can lead itself to helping out with the rake which is the biggest enemy at this level.

That's enough for now, I'll maybe go into some more details about my thoughts on PLO in general and short stacking strategy in my next post.

MNPuck

2009 Review

Going into 2009 I wasn't sure if I wanted to play poker or not. I gave online a shot a few times depositing into Full Tilt 50 on a couple of occasions. Problem was I would play in 24+2 tournies mostly and bust out after a tourney or two. I did manage to win a 10 dollar 45 man sng on full tilt fpr 170 dollars, but quickly gave the money back by entering big tournaments. I really felt that I could do well, but my bankroll management was terrible. I was left on the rail after a few tries.

I managed to save up some money and decided to give Ultimate Bet a try as I had rakeback on there. I started with 50 bucks and began to play the lowest game on there .01/.02 NL holdem. I did well and managed to work my way up to around 200 dollars. From there I began to play .05/.10 NL holdem, which on UB is a 20 max buyin. I did ok, then started getting coolered one hand after another. I remember one hand I had KK and the flop came AKx, we got allin on the flop and of course my opponent held AA. My bankroll quickly dipped to under 100 dollars.

At this point I thought about things and decided in my glory days I had done best at limit holdem. I redosited another 100 and began to play .25/.50 limit 6 max. To put it mildly I got killed, I couldnt believe what was happening. Every hand I'd get in with better starters and lose to some junk hand that made 2 pair or something. I was crushed. I took my remaining 50 of the site and began to rethink things.

My brother had been playing on pokerstars with some good results so I put my 50 on there. I was gonna grind .02/.04 limit. This lasted maybe 2 days as I couldnt bring myself to play that low. My brother had been playing PLO and I decided to give that a shot. At first I played so bad because I didnt know the game, but managed a few wins. I think I worked my bankroll up to around 150 bucks. I decided that PLO was for me so I took advantage of deposit bonuses (one Im still working off) and made deposits of 50, 100, 250. So I was now 450 invested into pokerstars. I did well on .01/.02 PLO so I moved up to .05/.10. I did well at first, but I soon found out the high rake at this level plus my bad play took me down. I reached 750 in account at one time, but cashed out at 550 for 100 profit. I left 6 dollars in my account which I'll get to later. So between UB and Pokerstars I was down 50 bucks.

I also played on fulltilt in 2009. I deposited 100 and worked of a 100 bonus and came out 50 ahead as well playing nothing but .01/.02 PLO. I had the account up to 400 at one point, but I cashed out at 300, for a 200 profit. Fulltilt offerred another bonus and I put 250 back into account to try and work off bonus. I was playing .25/.50 limit holdem and did well for awhile but then started getting killed again. I cashed out for 100, so down 150 for that deposit. Meaning I was up 50 for the year on fulltilt (this included bonuses and rakeback so in the games i actually lost). So +50 on fulltilt and -50 on UB + Pokerstars; has me even for the year.

Back to that 6 dollars I left on Pokerstars, I entered a 5.50 tourney with 20k guaranteed in prized money for basically all of my account. I finished 179th out of 5409 good for 27 dollars. The next day I played in an 11 dollar tourney and 16th out of 1204 good for 98 dollars. So I now had over 100 in my account. I started playing .01/.02 PLO again and won some more. I then entered a sattelite to the Sunday Million which I won and traded the tournament cash in for cash. I now had around 400 in my bankroll. This bankroll is still what I'm playing with today.

Basically it was a trial and error year for me online, I figured out which games were beatable by me and which ones werent. Alot of the factor in playing so low is the impact of the rake. Even games in which I mentioned I got killed, I beat without a rake. The following is a breakdown of game I played and my won/loss and I also noted rake paid:

Full Tilt

Game: .25/.50 Limit Holdem
Hands: 16,700
Won/Loss: -50
Rake Paid: 312

Game: .02/.05 PLO
Hands: 7,800
Won/Loss -89
Rake Paid: 160

Game: .01/.02 PLO
Hands: 24,700
Won/Loss +11
Rake Paid: 176

As can be seen the games I played at Full Tilt the rake had a huge impact.

Poker Stars

Game: .01/.02 PLO
Hands: 70,300
Won/Loss +251
Rake Paid: 251

Game: .05/.10 PLO
Hands: 14,770
Won/Loss: -65
Rake Paid: 298

Game: .01/.02 NL
Hands: 4,300
Won/Loss: +31
Rake Paid: 10

So really the only game that I 'beat' was .01/.02 PLO on stars. This is for a few reasons I think but the biggest one is the rake. The rake on stars doesnt start until the pot reaches 1 dollar. Stars takes 5 cent for every 1 dollar in the pot. Since most pots dont reach 1 dollar in .01/.02 the rake doesnt 'kick in' that often. As can be seen the rake 'kick in' much more on .05/.10 PLO as I paid more in rake there then in .01/.02 PLO with alot less hands.

So in review i made about 400 dollars in the year 2009 online, but I have new plans for 2010. I'll go into detail on my next post.

My Poker Career

The first time I can remember playing poker was in middle school. I lost like 5 or 10 dollars which was alot of money for me at the time, so I think I decided to never play again. I didnt for a long time.

While living in Portland, OR my friend Scott and I then saw Rounders sometime around in 1999 I think. We started playing heads up against each other for fun. We also took a trip sometime around that time frame and played some 7 card stud against his Dad and some friends. I didn't really understand alot about the game at that point but I did win one big hand. I was dealt JJ in the hole with a J as my hole card I believe. I caught the fourth J on sixth street. Me and another guy started raising each other back and forth. Eventually I just called on 6th and the reaising insued on 7th until it was maxed. I proudly flipped over my hand and he mucked a full house.

Eventually I moved back home to Minnesota in the fall of 2001 and soon after found myself looking into playing poker. I worked with a guy that played in tournaments at Foxwoods and he told me about pokerpages (I think that was it), were I could play tournaments online for free. I started playing in these and despite the huge fields I did very well, in fact I was on the top 20 leaderboard. This was good and all but I wanted to start and play for money.

I did some searching on the internet and found out there was a card room about 30 minutes from me. I also read on the internet about books to read on the game. I picked up a copy of Lee Jones' Winning Low Limit Texas Holdem and began to study. I memorized almost everything in that book before going to the card room. Luckily the book also included some tips on how to play in a card room. When I felt I was ready I headed to the card room (Canterbury Park) and began to play.

I got to the room and asked to get on the list of the lowest Hold'em game. There was a seat open and I sat down at a 2-4 limit table. It was truly amazing that first time I played. I was a very tight player from the get go and lost my first few sessions. It wasnt a big deal at the time as I had a good job and could support my poker habit. I suffered some beats for sure, but I was sure what I was taught in Lee Jones' book was correct and I would eventually start to win.

Around this time I also found you could play on the internet for money. So I looked around and found Ultimate Bet. I deposited 100 dollars and I started playing 1-2 limit. The game was slightly tighter then playing at Canterbury but I managed better results. Unfourtounately this was before tracking software and I didnt keep track of results (I wasnt relying for poker as an income so I didnt keep track). But overall I did well.

Soon I found other sites that offerred poker and I started to play at Pokerroom.com. They had 5 max limit games and I started at 1-2 there. I quickly built up a bankroll and became a regular at 5/10 limit. I would occassionally take shots higher and one day while drinking heavily at a bar I won 2k playing 10/20 limit (this was before most people multi-tabled so I was playing 1 table). I soon found out that Party Poker was the softest site so I began to play 10/20 and 15/30 limit there.

On the live side I started to have more positive results. My bankroll management at the time was to keep all my live money in a shoe box. I started with maybe like 200 and soon had 2 thousand in there. I began to play higher, with my prefferred game being 8/16 limit. One night after drinking heavily I gave the biggest game in the room a shot 30/60. I was so wasted that I flopped a set against 2 players and didnt see 3 to a flush on the flop. The board didnt pair and I lost alot as they both had flopped a flush. I walked out 2k in the hole that night.

In 2004 I changed jobs and moved to Marshall, MN. I moved in with a buddy and we began to have No Limit home games. I think it was .50/1 with 100 max buyin. The game was so easy and I always seemed to crush it. The first night I beat my bosses boss out of a couple hundred and had to explain myself the next day. The job didnt last long as my life was in turmoil at that point from the use of drugs and alcohol.

Upon losing the job I decided I'd give playing poker a shot. I had always done well and thought I could make it work. But once again partying got in the way and I did alot more of that then playing. When I did play I played terrible, and this was around the time when the games were very soft. I started to multi table playing 4 games of 25 NL on the Prima network at the time. I can tell you my exact results, but Im sure they weren't good.

Around 2005 I moved to Topeka, Kansas for a change of scene. Problem was I brought me with me and keep using drugs. I did find some time for poker though. There was a Harrah's about 20 minutes from town that spread 2/5 NL. I played in a few tournies cashing a couple times and winning 2 of them. I also played in a home game of 1/2 NL once a week and did very well in it. I ran pretty good at the casino as well, but I was using drugs to often to play alot. One hand Ill never forget happend while playing at Harrah's. I flopped a set of 9's on a 9 5 4 board. Guy to my right checked, I checked, and a kid bet 75 into the pot of about the same size. The guy to my right shoved all in for about 200. I had a stack a little above 500, so I shove as well before thinking. The kid to my left goes into the tank forever (I'd beat him in a few big pots before), and says set of 5's no good? I just said Im all in, call if you want. He had a stack about the same size as me. He folded the 5's face up and I was left all in against the guy on the rights AA. The moral of the story was think before u shove all in.

Over the next few years I didnt play much if any poker. I had gone to treatment for my drug and alcohol problems and the people in my live at the time didnt think playing poker was a good idea, so I didnt. I would return though.

Spring of 2008, I had just relapsed after 2 years of sobriety and decided to give poker another shot. I had never actually deposited on full tilt, so I decided to give their bonus a try. I played 10 or 25 NL and found the game to be very tough, much tougher then I remembered. For some reason I decided to give tournies a try. I tried them and did very well, cashing in a few. I then went on to win a tourney for 4200 and cash another for 700 in the same week. I thought I was invincable, nothing could take me out. Problem was that between my drug use, bad play, and very poor bankroll management skills I gave it all back, and then some. I got stuck for 2k that year and gave up playing again.

This bring me to 2009, a year I was sober the whole year and began to play with some more sense despit not having much of a bankroll. I'll cover that in my next post.

Welcome to MNPuck's poker blog

Hello... I'm starting this blog to keep anyone interested in my poker results updated. I'm not sure how much demand there is for this right now, but I figure I'll do this anyway. Part of the purpose of me having to post my results is that I have to be open and honest about them. I'll post soon my current bankroll, current games im playing, and how I got to where I'm at.