Crushing the micros: Now playing Spin & Goes

Originally posted by FollowTheSmartMoney
Sweet results for one week on such low stakes. You can already make a living with that in some countries
Well yes, it is good in my country where min. wage is 230 usd/month. But I'm aiming for 1k/month with poker, if not, it will be just about the same I'd earn in a job.

Originally posted by FollowTheSmartMoney
...However, two things: in SH we start with larger losses by default, just because we pay more blinds. On the other hand, the FR tables are a nitfest which can be pretty annoying at times - is there some good way to find some fish quickly without a programme like table ninja?

Yes, you color code all the regs (this can take up some days) and then you search for tables who have unknown players with less than 100bb, they are more likely than not fish.
Another strategy you can use is right click --> find player on someone you don't have color-coded. If they are playing just 1 table, they are usually fishy.

Yeah!!! Gold Star! ♦

Even though the difference from silver star is not substantial... and I think I'll only keep that status until November (since I think I'm gonna play half the hands I played on October)... it's nice. I think this month (I'll cash out some stellar rewards) I'll win a lot of my total earnings from rakeback.... hehe back to being a rakeback pro

A bad month! :/ I broke the premise of this blog "win at least 10bb/100 at the tables" but oh well, what to do... I was totally unmotivated and very distracted almost the whole time... last weekend for example I went out of my house on friday and returned on monday .. It was the first time I tried cocaine also hehe; it's funny, I live in Colombia and everybody in the world thinks we are cocaine lovers, but actually the opposite is true, only the very high class consumes cocaine occasionally (and 95% of the country are middle class or poor), and for the rest of Colombians drugs are very very bad. It might actually be the root of all of our problems (war, corruption, bad stereotypes for a lot of young people, etc), and its like an stigma here, so if you ever meet a Colombian take this advice: Never ever make jokes about cocaine/drugs...

On the other hand, (most) recreational drugs are not so bad hehe, it's just like poker, they have a lot of bad reputation and the banning of them in almost all countries certainly doesn't help. And just like poker they can destroy your life if you are a f***ng mindless addict; but if you take them knowing the risks and being aware of what you are doing they can be a lot of fun!! (if someone wants to talk more about the topic, answer in the comments, sometimes it feels no one reads other people's blogs; I think it's normal, the get rich or die trying promo creates a surplus in the supply of blogs but doesn't change the demand at all, so basic economics enter the play and every blog suddenly loses a lot of value )

Alright, back to poker:

More details and stats of the month:

November will be a transition month. I'm coming back to work at my company - there is a lot to do in the e-commerce site. We (as in the lead developer and me) want to do better a lot of things in the web app, one of them that anyone can buy without having to register to the web site. Registration is just so a "turn-off" hehe (even though we implemented one click registration with facebook, but anyway...). We are leaving registration optional, just for the customers who really want to be able to see their past orders or save whislists or track their order, etc. But most of our customers are moms who are buying in a website for their first time; so their experience should be as little traumatic as possible.

And also the announcement of Pokerstars with their change in the VIP system and their inminent ban on HUDs (I'm afraid of it, probably doesn't happen but I give it a high chance, like AKo vs 99 or something like that...) make November a "let's wait and see what happens" month.

1. Volume: I will play only 2 hours/day and all I can on the weekends; I'm aiming for 40.000 hands - if I can do more, so be it, that would be very nice; but I'd be happy with 40k.
2. Limits: I cashed out most of my Bankroll (I needed the money for my e-commerce business as I said) so I need to stick this week on NL10-5. But hopefully from next week I'll give again a shot to NL25 and playing just 2 hours/day I think my concentration and my winrate might go up!
3. Learning: I was just about to buy blackrain79's book; but I think I'm gonna wait for the dust to clear. Pokerstars is making more changes this month, and if they ban huds it might be silly to buy a book that is a lot about exploiting "advanced" stats from regulars...

Hey mate! Nice looking graph. 6.5bb still pretty good in my opinion. Let's aim for 10, but it's always good to remember that 10bb/100 is the ideal goal, and it's tough to maintain it, even in the micros I guess. But of course, we should be aiming for the maximum.

I was reading the discussion about about FR x SH x Zoom. I don't really know what zoom is, but there's one important point about SH tables, although you pay more blinds per hands played, you play more hands an hour, so it's worth considering if our hourly winrate isn't considerably bigger in SH. Afterall, what REALLY matters for us is the hourly winrate... to hell with bb/100. If we can make more money / hour on a lower bb/100, it's all the better.

Now, I'm not saying that our hourly is necesseraly bigger in SH, I just mentioned it because I didn't see anybody talking about this specific point. In the end, we'd have to put everything in the calculator. Acutally, we could even do this now....

In SH, you pay 1.5bb / 6 hands, or exactly 25bb / 100 hands
In FR, it'll be 1.5bb / 10 hands, or 15bb / 100 hands

So, you get an extra 10bb / 100 hands in FR

Ok, but if you 12 tabling, you're playing something like 240 extra hands per hour than you would in FR, right?

So, if you play 600 hands in FR, and you are getting an extra 10bb/100, you're getting an extra 600bb per hour because of the blinds thing.
But, because of more hands per hour in SH, you get an extra 240bb (if you're winning at 10bb/100 hands)

Which still leaves FR ahead of SH 360bb / hour

Now we have to consider that our winrate is potentially higher in SH games. If we're playing 840 hands / hour we need to have a winrate 2.33 bb higher in SH than in FR to make it worth playing.

So, what do you guys think?

I play shorthanded, but you point about the blinds really did make sense, and now I'm trying to figure out if I should move to FR

But I think we can gain this 2.3bb edge in SH. People are indeed a lot looser and we get to thin value bet a lot. But I don't really know for sure.

Sorry for opening up this discussion again in your blog =P But I got really interested in it

wolrath can you send me your skype adress i have few questions to ask you if it not a problem..:f_biggrin:

Originally posted by caltabiano
But I think we can gain this 2.3bb edge in SH. People are indeed a lot looser and we get to thin value bet a lot. But I don't really know for sure.

Sorry for opening up this discussion again in your blog =P But I got really interested in it

Hehe no problem! I think in the end it's up to oneself, there is of course money to be made at both (even at zoom, even though I still think cash games wheter FR or SH > Zoom).

You are right in the $/hour; so I guess it comes up in the end to your personal style. I am comfortable playing long hours, being very tight vs regs and very loose vs fish; and of course loose against regulars in the blinds... I've played both SH and FR and my winrate was higher in FR so I just stick there...

But if your winrate is bigger in SH, then go for it; I think in the end one should play the game style where one can play the A-Game most of the time; for me that is in FR!

Back when PTR was on, I remember the biggest winners (in bb/100) at least until NL100 were from FR. Do you remember the "player of the year badge"or something like that? the micro stakes winner was a russian with a winrate of 8 or 9bb/100 or something like that, but the 2nd place was a coach from the spanish community "Dante63s"... with a sick 10bb+ winrate in NL100 and NL200. He earned over USD 10k per month playing those limits and that was before rakeback. I think he never played SH....

But then on the midstakes the crusher was nanonoko who of course played most of his volume SH (althought some FR too)

So I'll keep playing FR just until there are not enough tables for the levels I play and I'm forced to change

Originally posted by Tinsley15
wolrath can you send me your skype adress i have few questions to ask you if it not a problem..:f_biggrin:

volrath891

Cool, it was pretty good discussing these ideas here, thanks for the light. I think I'm gonna make some trials, play some 50k hands in SH and then switch to FR to see how I feel about it. When I started playing, I started in FR of course, but once I moved to SH I never considered FR again, but it's clearly worth a thought. I'm gonna think more about it and try to find out which style will earn me the better hourly return, and give great consideration to this question you posed (which is of utmost importance):

I think in the end one should play the game style where one can play the A-Game most of the time;

Awesome stuff. Cheers!

Week 9 of the Bankroll challenge - NL5, NL10 FR

Hands: 4134
Profit: +$85.22
Starting BR: $400
Last Week's BR: $1524.83
Current BR: $1610.05
GOAL: $4,000.00

I ran good. Not only on EV, but also in the cards I was dealt and the flops I saw of course. I'd have loved to have played a little more, but this weekend I went out on friday, saturday and returned home only on sunday night. Life EV+ ♦

Next week I'll try NL25 once again. My Bankroll is healthy and I hope playing just 2 hours a day I can table select and focus as much as I can, so hopefully I start beating the level. The problem is not being able to put up volume so if I run bad I'll screw up the month (and again, I really need the money).

I also resumed my programming on the e-commerce site I've talked about. Most of the week's work was in the database design of the new system (inventory software) and a bit of front end... It took me a lot to make a menu which was highlighted in the page you are currently. Hehe, long time since I last programmed (6 months or something like that). Thanks god that stackoverflow exists!

First day back in NL25... it was a good one. Just at the end a fish hitted his 1 outter on the river and I lost a buy in (but I could have saved it.. .trips is no good vs a call call donk AI...)

A couple of interesting hands:

Here, villain played "good", my hand was basically flipped up; and what he ended up showing surprised me... Problem was, he wasn't representing much, it was actually a pretty easy call for me since I was expecting a lot of missed FD, QJ and low pairs... Question is, am I that bad of a regular for him to call preflop JTs OOP?
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/16651586_85889C1DA9

This is a hand I won but I wasn't particulary happy to find out villains that are able to do that. I hope this is the exception and not the rule! (he had 3 betted me 3 hands in a row and my 4bet size was particularly big to make him think he had tilted me )
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/16652160_C12828AB09

Wow, those hands... really looks like there are loads of fish left on NL25!

Originally posted by SvenBe
Wow, those hands... really looks like there are loads of fish left on NL25!

They were both regs!

Calling TJs oop is standard vs your position?

Originally posted by Varune
Calling TJs oop is standard vs your position?

I don't think so, that's why I was surprised when we reached the showdown. I say he is a reg because of his HUD stats, maybe he had few hands on me and thought I was a fish? (since it was my first day on the limit since a couple months)

Well if u dont defend TJs, your calling range oop seems to be supertight(and superobvious when u do play back?)

Originally posted by Varune
Well if u dont defend TJs, your calling range oop seems to be supertight(and superobvious when u do play back?)

well my open raise comes from the hijack, I'm not even "stealing", so idk, I think it might be a fold PF... but yeah as I said, I don't think villain played particularly bad at all, it's a though villain to play against!

Hey man nice blog!

Just wondering how you plan to use your FPP?

Originally posted by ReaZoN999
Hey man nice blog!

Just wondering how you plan to use your FPP?

I play the 235 FPP sats to the Sunday Storm and then trade the T$ for $ in this forum.

I've done it already twice for the months I've been playing... so far I've traded 12.000 FPPs for T$176 and those for $175, which gives me an avg value of USD 0.0145 x FPP

The maximum value you can get is 0.016 if you are Supernova, but since I'm not and won't be, the value for platinum is 0.1299; and with the tournaments the rate is higher. (And I'm not even Platinum either)

I'm still not so sure if I'll play the satellites for the FPPs I gather untill the end of the year (about 7k) or just wait for next year conversion at USD 0.0120 that stars said...

Though spot. Guy was a regular, seating in 15 tables and his bets were instantaneous. I think when you have some showdown value you think at least for a second about checking behind; so for me it makes it the nuts or a bluff. But why insta-shove something like 99-77 on that river where the board complicates a lot?
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/16665087_0EACE007A4

Originally posted by Volrath89

Originally posted by ReaZoN999
Hey man nice blog!

Just wondering how you plan to use your FPP?

I play the 235 FPP sats to the Sunday Storm and then trade the T$ for $ in this forum.

I've done it already twice for the months I've been playing... so far I've traded 12.000 FPPs for T$176 and those for $175, which gives me an avg value of USD 0.0145 x FPP

The maximum value you can get is 0.016 if you are Supernova, but since I'm not and won't be, the value for platinum is 0.1299; and with the tournaments the rate is higher. (And I'm not even Platinum either)

I'm still not so sure if I'll play the satellites for the FPPs I gather untill the end of the year (about 7k) or just wait for next year conversion at USD 0.0120 that stars said...

yea SS sats are the best value, but id like to point out, that there are also 70-80FPP sats somtimes available with same value and structure, BUT u can decrease variance by playing these. and imo thats a big thing knowing how huge variance is in that shallow format.

cheers

Originally posted by Volrath89

Originally posted by ReaZoN999
Hey man nice blog!

Just wondering how you plan to use your FPP?

I play the 235 FPP sats to the Sunday Storm and then trade the T$ for $ in this forum.

I've done it already twice for the months I've been playing... so far I've traded 12.000 FPPs for T$176 and those for $175, which gives me an avg value of USD 0.0145 x FPP

The maximum value you can get is 0.016 if you are Supernova, but since I'm not and won't be, the value for platinum is 0.1299; and with the tournaments the rate is higher. (And I'm not even Platinum either)

I'm still not so sure if I'll play the satellites for the FPPs I gather untill the end of the year (about 7k) or just wait for next year conversion at USD 0.0120 that stars said...

I did that while I was playing MTT/SNG last month, got very good results out of it. Im wondering though at NL25 and platinumstar for example if its worth the risk (variance wize) instead of cashing in the 75$.

Cool blog man, definetly following, we have about the same results thus far

You can add me on skype if you want! jo.jalbert